Paddy Japanangka Lewis was born circa 1925, in the bush around Yuendumu/ Nyirripi in the Tanami Desert. Living a nomadic life as hunter-gatherers, his extended Warlpiri family travelled vast distances across desert country, showing Paddy his sites and teaching him the traditional ways of his country.
Though he began painting in the late 1990s, he began his most important body of work in 2006 and in 2008, Trevor Victor Harvey Gallery (now Harvey Galleries) in Sydney held his first ever solo show incorporating many of the most important works of his lifetime.
At the time of his death in 2011, he was a senior Warlpiri lawman and custodian of Mina Mina Lakes located more than 400 km north-west of Alice Springs. He was also the father of highly acclaimed artists Dorothy Napangardi Robertson and Margaret Lewis Napangardi, who also painted stories associated with this region.
Paddy was a multi-talented performer and, in 1999, he was featured in the film Marluku Wirlinyi: The Kangaroo Hunters, a tale that takes place in both the Dreamtime and the present day.
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