LILY KELLY NAPANGARDI

Lily Kelly Napangardi is a senior law woman of the Watiyawanu community, in the Haasts Bluff area of the Northern Territory, 325 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. Lily was born c.1948 in the Haast Bluff region of the Northern Territory. She lived at the newly established settlement of Papunya for much of her early life, relocating to Mt Liebig with her husband in the early 1980's. Napangardi began painting in the early 1980's and has become a high profile major Central Desert artist.

Her subjects include her country's sandhills, its winds and the desert environment after rain, especially the sandhills of the Kintore and Connistan areas. Her paintings often note the seasonal changes in this sandy landscape, and the crucial waterholes found in the rocks in the area.

Selected Exhibitions:
2004 ‘Lily Kelly Napangardi and Ngoia Napaljarri Pollard’, Neil Murphy Indegious Art, Sydney
2004 Mary Place Gallery, Sydney

Selected Collections:
Art Gallery of New South Wales: Mollie Gowing Acquisition Fund for Contemporary Aboriginal Art 2003.
Queensland Art Gallery
The Holmes à Court Collection
The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, USA
Thomas Vroom Collection, Amsterdam

Awards:
2003 Napangardi’s increasingly high profile as a major artist was accepted into the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award 2003. Winner of the Northern Territory Art Award 1986.