Felicity Nampijinpa Robertson / Water Dreaming – Puyurru (3271-23)

Artwork is accompanied by Warlukurlangu Artists (Yuendumu) Art Centre Certificate of Authenticity/Provenance

Felicity Nampijinpa Robertson has lived most of her life in Yuendumu, an Aboriginal settlement located 290kms northwest of Alice Springs in the northern Territory of Australia. She attended the local school and then attended Batchelor College, Darwin where she received a Diploma in teaching as an Assistant Teacher. She has worked on and off over the years at Yuendumu School. She is married and has five children and many grandchildren. Felicity is the daughter of the renowned late artist Shorty Jangala Robertson. In 2007 Felicity went to Melbourne where she represented her father’s painting.

Felicity has been painting since 2002 and has exhibited her art work in Group Exhibitions since 2005. She was also one of the artists who helped paint the Yuendumu School Doors.

Felicity paints at her art centre and at home. At home, she likes to tell her grandchildren her Dreaming while she paints. She paints her Ngapa Jukurrpa (Water Dreaming) and Watiyawarnu Jukurrpa (Seed Dreaming) stories, stories passed down to her from her father and his father’s father before him. These stories are creation stories that relate to Felicity’s family’s traditional country, traditions that stretch back at least fifty millennia.

Felicity likes to paint, “it makes me comfortable painting all the different Ngapa and Watiyawarnu designs”.

The site depicted in this painting is Puyurru, west of Yuendumu. In the usually dry creek bed are water soakages or naturally occurring wells. Two Jangala men, rainmakers, sang the rain, unleashing a giant storm. It travelled across the country, with the lightning striking the land. This storm met up with another storm from Wapurtali, to the west and was picked up by a ‘kirrkarlanji’ (brown falcon) and carried further west until it dropped the storm at Purlungyanu, where it created a giant soakage. At Puyurru the bird dug up a giant snake, ‘warnayarra’ (the Rainbow Serpent). The snake carried water with it to create a large lake named Jillyiumpa, close to an outstation in this country.

In contemporary Warlpiri paintings traditional iconography is used to represent the Jukurrpa, associated sites and other elements. In many paintings of this Jukurrpa curved and straight lines represent the ‘ngawarra’ (flood waters) running through the landscape. Motifs frequently used to depict this story include small circles representing ‘mulju’ (water soakages) and short bars depicting ‘mangkurdu’ (cumulus & stratocumulus clouds).