MARY ROBERTS NAKAMARRA
Mary Roberts Nakamarra is an emerging artist and a member of Papunya Tjupi Arts, an Aboriginal owned and operated art centre west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
Painting goes back two generations in Mary Roberts Nakamarra’s family. Her father Murphy Roberts Tjupurrula was one of the most respected senior lawmen in the Papunya community and also a Lutheran pastor and a painter. He taught Nakamarra, born in 1974, how to paint on canvas. While she was a young girl, she remembers watching her maternal grandfather Limpi Tjapangati, one of the early Papunya Tula painters, working on his canvases. Elements of his distinctive style are discernible in Nakamarra’s work today.
Nakamarra joined Papunya Tjupi in 2008. It was her aunt, Lorabelle Puntungunka, one of Papunya Tjupi Arts’ founding painters, who influenced Nakamarra most. “She told me to paint before she passed away. I was thinking that I want to paint that story. I was thinking of doing painting with story on it. I have only just started painting.” (Nakamarra, pers.comm.)
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