Kawayi Nampitjinpa

Kawayi Nampitjinpa is the widow of Benny Tjapaltjarri who painted regularly for Papunya Tula Artists from the late 1970’s until 2002. He was a well known ‘nangkari’ or bush doctor, who worked for many years as a traditional healer at the Pintupi Homelands Health Services clinic at Walungurru (Kintore). Kawayi completed her first paintings for Papunya Tula Artists in 1998. It was estimated that she was born sometime around the late 1940’s. The stories that Kawayi refers to in her work centre around the site of Pinpirrnga, a rockhole north of Kintore and close to the outstation of Desert Bore, which was established by her late husband.