Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  Painted in 1990
  Warlayirti Artists, Wirrimanu (Balgo Hills), Western Australia
  Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne
  Property of a Melbourne collector
  
  Cf. For a series of related paintings all executed in 1990, see Stephen Williamson and Samantha Togni (eds.), Eubena Nampitjin: Art and Life, Wirrimanu (Balgo Hills): Warlayirti Artists Aboriginal Corporation, 2005; fig.4, p.28, fig.5 p.29, fig.15, p.39. fig.16, p.40. fig.19, p.43, fig.22, p.45, fig. 29, p53; and Anne Marie Brody (ed.), Stories: Eleven Aboriginal Artists, Works From The Holmes à Court Collection, Sydney: Craftsman House, 1997; p.55.
  
  When Eubena Nampitjin married the great painter Wimmitji Tjapangarti (1924-2000) in the early 1980s she was not inclined to create her own paintings for a public audience. Rather, she enjoyed watching Wimmitji paint. The Catholic Education Centre that had been established at Balgo in 1981 provided an outlet for his works. By the mid-1980s however, Eubena began to make her own paintings, some of which were shown in the first major exhibition of Balgo art, Aboriginal Art from the Great Sandy Desert, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia at the end of 1986. In the following years, as Wimmitji became frail, Eubena would assist him with his paintings. Originally, her paintings tended towards rigid compositions and an even application of paint. However working with Wimmitji did influence her art.
  
  By 1990, Eubena was beginning to develop her distinctive style that features looser, more organic compositions and the layering of paint to create visually tactile surfaces that owe much to traditional sources: narrative sand drawings and ceremonial ground mosaics. Pingkarri, Canning Stock Route, 1990, is a fine example of the transition in the artist's style. This nostalgic painting shows a waterhole known as Pingkarri, near the Canning Stock Route, where Eubena and her family would gather bush foods. It is a place associated with the ancestral bush turkey, Kipara, whose tracks appear in the painting as an indicator of the sacred associations of the place.
  
  Wally Caruana
  
  This painting is sold with a copy of the original Warlayirti Artist certificate.