About Pauline Sunfly Nangala

Pauline was born at the old Balgo Mission in 1957. Bai Bai introduced her three daughters to painting at an early age, teaching them Tjukurrpa (creation stories and lore) through mark making. Pauline became an adept painter in her own right as a young woman, learning her craft through time spent sitting and painting with her parents. From her parents she inherited an ancient way of knowledge and techniques, making it her own visual language as well. Pauline expertly combines both their hands. Together with her father’s striking designs and her mother’s dazzling color, the student becomes the master. Pauline is also an extraordinarily brave female artist. Painting stories passed on to her by her father, she defies tradition, breaking away from conservative desert painting. The Dreaming in Indigenous Australia is passed generation to generation. It holds the Law, protected and interpreted by culture bearers. It is the spirit of a culture. Pauline Sunfly’s parents were holders of that knowledge. They were and are the culture bearers of an animistic way of perceiving the world, immersed in a worldview that perceives the universe on one hand and place on the other in a simultaneity of past, present and future. The earth itself holds the universal patterns of tribal existence. (Warlayirti Artist)