Linda Syddick Napaltjarri

Much loved artist, Lynda Syddick, found her inspiration in the people, events and metaphysical stories that sustained her life. Born near Lake Mackay, in the Gibson Desert of W.A., she lived a semi-nomadic life until the age of eight years old. Her family walked into the Lutheran mission of Haasts Bluff, encountering white people for the first time and where Linda started school. While she was a baby her father had been speared in a traditional law killing but her mother later remarried, and the family moved to the community of Kintore. Linda was brought up by her stepfather Shorty Lungkarta, a well-respected desert artist who was instrumental in Linda’s own career. Although Lindas’s artist uncles, Uta Uta Tjangala and Nosepeg Tjuppurrula, continued her art instruction after Shorty’s death in 1985, it was the case that during the early days of the Desert Art movement (at Papunya during early 1970’s), there was strong resistance amongst the all-male artists to allow women to paint in their own right. However, there was also a growing desire amongst the women to paint and, assisted by new government-run programs, large numbers of women were painting by the 1990’s and like the men, earning much acclaim. The women found they could support themselves and their families as well as preserve their culture and well-being through art. Composition, line and texture all work toward a pleasing narrative quality in Linda’s work, elucidating the experiences that shaped her life. A subtle fusion of aboriginal and Christian motifs background a story played out with amiable and captivating figures, reminiscent of an ancient rock painting tradition. She paints the country around Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) where her people gathered for thousands of years on their ceremonial and seasonal journeys. She was conferred the sacred dreamtime stories of the Tingari Creation myths and the Emu Men who created the landscape and instructed humankind in the Law. In her distinctive style, she also tells stories of her first encounters with white people, winning the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 2006 for The Witchdoctor and the Windmill. The story relates how the witchdoctor threw spells at the windmill to ensure the group’s safe passage past the monstrous contraption and into the European settlement. Linda’s work has appeared in many prestigious exhibitions and forms part of the collections in the National Galleries of Australia. Her highly collectable work provides a unique insight into the last generation of fully traditional desert nomads and their first encounters with inevitable change.