Nellie Marks Nakamarra
Nellie was born at Papunya, a small community located 240 km west of Alice Springs, where the first Aboriginal artworks in acrylic on canvas were produced in 1971.
She is the daughter of Frank Warangkula Tjupurrula and Mary Tolson Napanangka. Nellie was raised with her older sister Elizabeth who is also a famous Papunya artist. Nellie started painting at the age of sixteen under the tutelage of her step-father Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula who was one of the acclaimed painters who were part of the Papunya Tula art movement from the beginning.
Nellie paints the dreaming of her father’s and her grandfather’s country which lies to the east of Kintore in the Northern Territory. She is very quiet person and well respected by her people in Kintore. She lives the traditional lifestyle of Pintupi people, feeling very proud and confident about her ways.
In her paintings Nellie loves to introduce the world to her dreamings and her culture and she does it with very natural sense of peace and harmony in her powerful artworks of Minna Minna Country. It is at these sacred sites of Minna Minna Country that women narrate their dreamtime stories through song lines, dancing and body painting.
Nellie’s paintings are held in major galleries in Australia and around the globe.