Lily Kelly Napangardi

Senior artist Lily Kelly Napangardi has developed an artistic vision of the vast sandhill country of her homelands around Mt Liebig and Haasts Bluff. Her paintings capture the extensive undulating country, and suggest the shifting nature of the desert sand dunes. Lily Kelly Napangardi creates her work using minimal colour, concentrating on the contrast she achieves using white dotting on a black background. The dots vary in size and intensity, creating a shimmer effect that denies any attempt at making a solid and changeless structure in a desert landscape.
Lily Kelly Napangardi was born in Haasts Bluff, grew up in Papunya and later moved to My Liebig where she has lived for thirty years. Lily Kelly Napangardi refers in her paintings to the Women’s Dreaming story from Kunajarrayi, and to the terrain around the Kintore and Coniston areas. Lily has established her place as a senior law woman in her community, teaching the younger women in the traditional ceremonies associated with her Dreaming.
While Lily Kelly Napangardi presents the finest microcosmic details in her paintings, she embeds these into a macrocosmic aerial view of her country. The ephemeral nature of this drifting, changing landscape is Lilly Kelly Napangardi’s key subject, and the viewer, standing in front of her paintings, can sense something of the immersive experience of her country. In 2003, Lilly Kelly Napangardi won the General Painting category at the 20th Telstra Aboriginal & Torres Strait Island Art Awards.