Roma Butler

Roma Nyutjangka Butler belongs to the Pitjantjatjara language and cultural group. The cousin of much celebrated Musee du Quai Branly artist, Tommy Watson, Roma was born in 1959 at Wilu rockhole on the kanyala tjukurpa (euro kangaroo dreaming) track. She spent her early years at Ernabella mission in South Australia and then travelled by camel to Warburton in Western Australia, where she went to school and learned to read and write. At the age of 12, she moved to Irrunytju, her grandfather’s brother’s country.

Roma’s career as an artist began in the late 1990’s at the outstations of Kintore and Kiwirrkurra where she came under the influence of the dotted, figurative artistic style of Pintupi artists and Papunya Tula art. At Irrunytju several years later, her painting took up a freer style as she, encouraged by minyma pampa (old women) such as Kuntjil Cooper, began painting some of the more emotionally intense stories of her tjukurpa that focus on one aspect of a far larger story rather than travels and pathways of the creation ancestors. Hers are stories of indigenous women’s business concerning kinship relationships, birth and survival. Tjukurpa explains creation and existence, revealing how one should live, and is relevant for the past and the present.

Roma works as an artist and with Ngaanyatjarra Media presenting a daily radio program of local music and news with her husband Simon Butler. She continues to practice traditional cultural activities including hunting and gathering bush foods, singing and dancing inma.