Born circa 1945-2019
Language Group: Pintupi
Born near Haasts Bluff

Mitjili Napurrula has a strong family connection to the central Desert art movement. Her family includes celebrated artists Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, Long Tom Tjapanangka and Tjunkayi Napaltjarri. Mitjili Napurrula began as many of the women artists of the Central Desert did, by assisting her famous husband Long Tom Tjapanangka in producing paintings. By the 1990s many women artists emerged from the shadows of their more famous men folk to establish their own reputations as artists.Mitjili Napurrula uses the traditional method of repeated motifs to express the extensive and significant role of the watiya trees in the Tjukurrpa rituals around the making of spears. Mitjili Napurrula was taught the ways of her father’s Tjukurrpa by her mother – the imagery was drawn in the sand to show the representations of the creation story. Mitjili Napurrula has made the iconography her own, showing the spreading root system of the watiya trees that provide the all-important wood for spear- making.

About painting - Watiya Tjuta (many trees)
This is Mitjili’s father’s country. The trees are from Uwalki, they are the Spear Wood from which the spears are made. This Dreaming relates to the spear story painted by her brother Turkey Tolson. Turkey’s story is of the Creation Ancestors at the site of Ilyingaungau, a rocky outcrop near Kintore. This painting shows the outcrop or puli which means rocks in Pintupi. In the creation era a large group of men (the Mitukatjirri Men) travelled from the claypan at Tjukula to Ilyingaungau where they made camp. At the same time a group of men entered the country from Tjikari (to the north) and the Mitukatjirri Men challenged them to a fight. The Tjikari Men willingly took up the challenge after the fight the Mitukatjirri Men travelled to nearby cave, where they made their ceremonies and spears. The trees are known as Spear Wood. The men make their spears from the long slender branches. Mitjili passed away in April 2019.