Liddy Napanangka Walker

Liddy was born in 1925 at Mt Doreen, and spent her younger years living with her family in bush camps. She regularly visited her country around Mt Theo, west of Yuendumu. She had lived in Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community located 290 kms north-west of Alice Springs, in the NT of Australia, since it was first established and worked in the community in various pastoral care roles including cooking for the sick or the elderly. She started painting on canvas not long after Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, was established in 1985 and Liddy became one of its most senior members. Liddy painted her father’s Jukurrpa stories, Dreaming stories which relate directly to her land, its features and animals. These stories were passed down to her by her father and her grandfather and their parents before them for millennia. They include Warna (Snake), Kanta (Bloodwood Gall or Bush Coconut), Wardapi (Goanna) and Wakirlipirri (Acacia Seed). Bean Dreaming 1985, on which she collaborated with Topsy Napanangka and Judy Nampitjinpa Granites , was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia and was included in the Windows of the Dreaming exhibition at the Gallery in 1989.
Liddy passed away in 2017.
She is quoted by Warlukurlangu Artists: ” I paint my father Japangardi’s Dreaming and my grandfather’s Dreaming. Mt Theo is my father’s country and that’s what I’m painting the special Dreamings from. The Dreamings I paint are bush tomato, goanna….Goanna likes to fight and is a lover boy. And I paint seed pods and bush potato and hopping mouse. There are lots of stories…I paint strongly.”