Canning Stock Route - Eubena Nampitjin

Eubena Nampitjin began painting in 1988 alongside her second husband Wimmitji Tjapangarti. Their early works portrayed Dreaming sites, country and ancestral travels in the most intimate cartographic detail and are to this day the very finest paintings that have ever emanated from the Balgo Hills community.

After the death of her daughter Ema Gimme Nungurrayi in 1993, Nampitjin returned to her birthplace near Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route and did not paint again until encouraged to return to Balgo Hills two years later. From that time on she painted alone with larger, freer dots and a more gestural style executed with a palette of red, yellow and pink. In time these late career works became more akin to finger painting with fluid brushstrokes and only the occasional intimate section actually dotted with a stick.

Nampitjin’s work, with its trademark use of vibrant colour, bold patterning, and rough and ready handling, creates an ‘extraordinary sense of presence as in this rendition of her country along the middle stretches of the Canning Stock Route, near Kunawarritji (Well 33). This is the place where Nampitjin would often hunt and gather food. The strong lines in the painting depict the tali (sandhills) that dominate this country surrounding a hill named Yilpa.