Peggy Napurrurla Granites / Dogwood Tree Bean Dreaming (5660-23)

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

Peggy Napurrurla Granites was born in 1958 on Gordon Downs Station in Western Australia. She is the daughter of Peggy Napaljarri Rockman, a Warlpiri-speaking Indigenous artist, and Jampu Jackamarra. When she was young her parents were relocated to Lajamanu, an Aboriginal community in semi-arid country on the edge of the Tanami Desert, halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs and 557ks south west of Katherine. Peggy went to the local school before being sent to Kormilda College, an Aboriginal boarding college in Darwin. When she finished school, she returned to Lajamanu. “At that time I was just learning … it was exciting … travelling between the communities … learning about country … and about hunting.” In 1980 she moved to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs, where she still lives. She has five brothers and one sister, who “live everywhere!”

Peggy began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre, in 1998. She paints her father’s Pirlarla Jukurrpa (Dogwood Tree Bean Dreaming), stories that have been passed down to him from his father and his father’s father for millennia. She learnt to paint by watching her mother, who loved to paint. Peggy enjoys working with colour and uses an unrestricted palette to depict her traditional iconography, at the same time developing a modern individualist style, using pattern and design in a variety of contexts.

When she is not painting, she is kept busy with her children and her “many grandchildren”. She also likes to visit her mother who is now in a nursing home in Katherine.

This story of the Pirlarla Jukurrpa (dogwood tree bean Dreaming) comes from the country near to the Yiningnarra range, south of Rabbit Flat and several hundred kilometers to the north-west of Yuendumu. This Jukurrpa travels west and begins near Yumurrpa. There, women of the Napurrula/Nakamarra subsection travelled and collected the ‘pirlarla’ (seeds and pods) of the ‘wakirlpirri’ (dogwood) tree, a valuable and highly prized food source. In the hot summer time the ‘pirlarla’ seed pods are collected, burnt in a fire and then cracked open. The seeds inside the pods are then ground up and make a good food. The juice from the seeds is also edible. In Warlpiri paintings traditional iconography is used to represent the Jukurrpa and other elements. In paintings of this Jukurrpa the representative designs that are painted onto women’s bodies during their Yawulyu ceremonies are often shown. The custodians of the Pirlarla Jukurrpa are Jakamarra/Jupurrurla men and Nakamarra/Napurrurla women.