Willy Tjungurrayi :
Born:           c 1936
Region:        Western Desert
Country:        Patjantja, south west of Kintore
Language Bloc:     Western Desert
Language:     Pintupi
Social Affiliations: Tjungurrayi subsection
Subjects:     Tingari, Kuniya at Karrilwarra.

The brother of respected painters Brandy and George "Hairbrush" Tjungarrayi and the late Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi, Willy Tjungurrayi was born about 1936 at Patjantja, southwest of Lake Mackay in the Northern Territory. Willy was raised by Charlie TARAWA, who was Willy's father's brother.  Willy was raised 'in the bush'-'naked' with 'only nulla nulla and woomera'. It was Charlie's camels which eventually brought the family in to Haasts Bluff in 1956, and began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1976. By the 1980s Willy was recognized as a senior Pintupi painter, and he joined the movement of return to the Pintupi homelands. He now lives at Walungurru.

His country lies a short distance to the south west of Kintore, around Kulkuta, Tjukula, Warrabri, Malka, Yumari, Tjitikulpa and Patjanytja.

In the early '80s he joined the move back to the Pintupi homelands and now lives with his family in Kintore.

One of the most sought after painters of the Western Desert, Willy Tjungurrayi is a senior Pintupi man, entitled by his ancestry and communal position to paint the sacred and secret Tingari cycle. He has been acknowledged as one of the great colourists of contemporary Aboriginal painting.

The Paintings
Stories from the Tingari Dreaming song cycle, and the land around Haast's Bluff, Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) and Kaakuratintja (Lake MacDonald), are Willy Tjungarrayi's two great linked themes. For some subjects Willy paints dozens of dotted roundels (concentric circles), linked by parallel lines, the spaces between them filled with bright, flat primary and mixed colours, a depiction of the travels and stopping places of the Tingari Men, an image of the rhythmic repetition of the songs associated with the Tjukurpa (Creation era or Dreaming).
More recently, hundreds of endless wavy lines in an ochre monochrome shimmer across the canvas on a pale background. These paintings illustrate (or witness, might be more correct) the sandhills and the fierce hailstorm that killed the ancestral Tingari Men in the Dreamtime.

Willy Tjungarrayi's work is much sought after, and has been collected into many major private and public collections.

Collections
Aboriginal Art Museum, The Netherlands.
Artbank, Sydney.
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
Flinders University Art Museum, Adelaide.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra.
The Holmes a Court Collection, Perth.
The Kelton Foundation, Santa Monica, U.S.A.

Exhibitions
2004: Papunya Tula Artists 2004: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne; Australian Aboriginal Art Collector's Exhibition, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.
2003: Kintore Kiwirrkura 2003: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne.
1994: Central Australian Aboriginal Art and Craft Exhibition, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs; Yiribana, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
1991: The Painted Dream: Contemporary Aboriginal Paintings from the Tim and Vivien Johnson Collection, Auckland City Art Gallery and Te Whare Taonga o Aoteroa National Art Gallery, New Zealand.
1989: Aboriginal Art: The Continuing Tradition, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
1988: Australian Aboriginal Graphics from the Collection of the Flinders University Art Museum.
1987: Art and Aboriginality, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK.
1985: Dot and Circle, a retrospective survey of the Aboriginal acrylic paintings of Central Australia, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne.
1983: Papunya: paintings from the Central Australian Desert, touring exhibition, America and Europe.
1982: Georges Gallery, Melbourne; Brisbane Festival; Mori Gallery, Sydney.