Travelling Past

Australian Aboriginal Artist Debra Nangala MacDonald's works reflect the stories of her family from her ancestral sites near Lake MacDonald and Papunya. Painted especially for the Art to Art gallery are a beautiful series of works in her traditional, Central Australian art style.

Debra is a Pintupi artist, born at Papunya in 1969 – several hours northwest of Alice Springs in Central Australia. She comes from a large family of well known artists, including her mother Martha McDonald, her aunties Linda Syddick Napaltjarri and Wentja Napaltjarri, and her uncle Clifford Possum. Debra Nangala McDonald has inherited a strong line of stories that relate to her own family history when they travelled over great distances from the Gibson Desert to come into desert settlements.

The family group settled in the small communities at Haasts Bluff, Papunya and Mt Liebig during the 1940s. Her paintings have been documented in Geoffrey & James Bardon’s book “Papunya – A Place Made After the Story. The Beginning of the Western Desert Painting Movement”, and consist of the traditional aboriginal dot painting style belonging to the Central and Western Australian desert area. She also paints in a simplified geometric style like that of her mother in law, Mitjili Napurrula, an artist who Debra often paints beside and who's stories and traditions she continues. Debra paints from her home in Adelaide, but also does short stints travelling and painting in Melbourne and elsewhere in Australia