Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri

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Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri (b.c.1926 at Marnpi southeast of Kintore), is one of the most important painters to emerge from the Western Desert since 1971.

From the Pintupi language group, his parents were killed when he was young, and he was raised, first by relative at Putarti, and later at the Hermannsburg Mission. He worked for a stockman named McNamara, hence "Mick Namarari." He was removed from Haasts Bluff to Papunya in the early 1960s, and was one of the original painting men with Geoff Bardon there.

From early figurative works, he moved on to creating large geometric designs that typified Papunya Tula art in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1990s he began producing "minimalist" paintings that depicted the imprint of a kangaroo in the sand, the seeds that the marsupial mouse feeds upon, or the aftermath of hailstorms in the desert.

He was the subject of Geoff Bardon's documentary film "Mick and the Moon,". He died in Alice Springs in 1998, survived by his wife Elizabeth Nakamarra Marks and his daughter Angeline Nungurrayi.

[edit] See also

• Papunya Tula