Eubena Nampitjin was born at Tjinndjaldpa, south of Jupiter Well. She was one of six children. When she was very young she lost her mother, both her sisters and one brother. She lived with her family in the sandhills of the Canning Stock Route, travelling between Kunawarritji and Jila as far as Waladayilyu.
Her country is Tjaalinu, to the south of Kukatja territory, and Yurunguny, east of the Canning Stock Route. It was here that she travelled extensively because of the many waterholes, billabongs and rockholes - prime water sources at different times of the year.
Eubena married when she was very young and shortly afterwards first saw kartiya (non-Aboriginal people) at Kinyu, near Nyipily, on the Canning Stock Route. She thought the kartiya men taking bullocks to the well to drink were ghosts and was afraid that they might take away her baby, Nyula. She and her family followed the men to Billiluna Station, where she worked in the yards, drove bullocks and rode camels with other Kukatja people from along the Canning Stock Route.
When she heard that her relatives were at Old Balgo mission, she went there to be with her family and live and work on the mission as a goatherd. Eubena and her first husband went on to work with a Catholic priest in compiling a Kukatja dictionary.
Eubena went to the school and to teach the younger girls how to dance and to paint their bodies for ceremony. She saw the other women painting on board and decided to follow their example in the mid-1980s when she began painting with her second husband Wimitji.
She became an important artist when she first exhibited her work in 1988, and held her first solo exhibition at Alcaston Gallery in 1998. The artist's work has been included in many major exhibitions including Images of Power: Aboriginal Art of the Kimberley, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1993; Stories: A Journey Around Big Things: Work by 11 Aboriginal Artists, The Holmes à Court Collection, Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany, 1995; and In Place (Out of Time): Contemporary Art in Australia, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1997.
