Biography

Born about 1935 at Maya, north west of Kintore Nancy Ross Nungurrayi lived with her parents at Wala Wala, west of the Kiwirrkurra Community. She began painting for Papunya Tula artists in 1996. Nancy and her older sister, Naata Nungurrayi, with eight other women from Walunguru (Kintore), took part in a collaborative painting, which was exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1999 for the Papunya tula, Genisis and Genius exhibition. Nancy has a distinctive technique and uses the large 'U' shapes in her artwork to represent the body paint designs painted on womens' breasts when taking part in the women's ceremony. Many of her paintings depict women grinding wangunu, a grass seed used to make traditional damper. Apart from the symbols used to represent the women and their activities, Nancy depicts sand hills, (tali) and the rocky hills (puli). These symbols are all from an aerial perspective.
Nancy passed away in 2010.