Nyapanyapa Yunupingu’s White Painting

Detail of Nyapanyapa Yunupingu’s “White Painting” (2010). Earth pigments on bark

“I do beautiful neat paintings and work. I do paintings, all of it, not with any other colors, like black, only with the white one…I didn’t do trees, rocks or anything else, not at all…I only made designs. My father didn’t teach me, I learnt it myself. I saw my father’s hands painting and then my father said, ‘I want you to do this, my daughter, to work this way. To paint as you are watching my hands.’ He painted as I watched him. As he did this he said, ‘You will do this in the future my daughter.’ The painting I did was my own and I haven’t made any mistakes, none. My lines aren’t tangled and messy, not at all.”–Nyapanyapa Yunupingu

This work is on view in Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia through September 9, 2018.

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