Ngayuku Ngura (My Country), 2010

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

120 x 90 cm

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Provenance: Palya Proper Fine Art, Alice Springs, NT Red Desert Dreamings, Melbourne, Vic, Cat No. RDDTW1002 Accompanied by a folio of 17 photographs of the artist painting the work.
Artwork story: This painting, like much of Tommy Watson’s work, is a luminous celebration of his ancestral country. Through intricate dotting, vivid colour, and rhythmic composition, Watson captures the shifting light and energy of the desert landscape — its rockholes, sandhills, and the ancestral stories that flow through them. His canvases shimmer with movement, transforming traditional iconography into fields of light that evoke both the vastness and vitality of the desert landscape. A senior Pitjantjatjara elder from Irrunytju (Wingellina), located near the tri-border of Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, Watson began painting in 2001. His debut at the 2002 Desert Mob exhibition was met with immediate acclaim, and his reputation grew rapidly after the record sale of a major work in 2003. In 2006, he was commissioned to create a permanent ceiling mural, Wipu Rockhole, for the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris — a milestone that cemented his international standing. Watson’s art was guided by a deep spiritual connection to Country. He painted from lived experience and ceremony, expressing the enduring heat, light and movement of the desert — a vision that continues to define him as one of Australia’s most powerful contemporary painters.

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c.1935 – 2017

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

120 x 90 cm

Enquire for price

Provenance: Palya Proper Fine Art, Alice Springs, NT Red Desert Dreamings, Melbourne, Vic, Cat No. RDDTW1002 Accompanied by a folio of 17 photographs of the artist painting the work.
Artwork story: This painting, like much of Tommy Watson’s work, is a luminous celebration of his ancestral country. Through intricate dotting, vivid colour, and rhythmic composition, Watson captures the shifting light and energy of the desert landscape — its rockholes, sandhills, and the ancestral stories that flow through them. His canvases shimmer with movement, transforming traditional iconography into fields of light that evoke both the vastness and vitality of the desert landscape. A senior Pitjantjatjara elder from Irrunytju (Wingellina), located near the tri-border of Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, Watson began painting in 2001. His debut at the 2002 Desert Mob exhibition was met with immediate acclaim, and his reputation grew rapidly after the record sale of a major work in 2003. In 2006, he was commissioned to create a permanent ceiling mural, Wipu Rockhole, for the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris — a milestone that cemented his international standing. Watson’s art was guided by a deep spiritual connection to Country. He painted from lived experience and ceremony, expressing the enduring heat, light and movement of the desert — a vision that continues to define him as one of Australia’s most powerful contemporary painters.