Narputta Nangala was born at Karrkurutinyja (Lake MacDonald), her father's and grandparents' country. This is a kuniya kutjarra jukurrpa Dreaming place (a story of two carpet snakes associated with the two Tjangala brothers).
Her country is Lampintja, a claypan depression just south of Lake MacDonald, which is a kurrkati tjukurrpa (goanna Dreaming) place. Her father's name was Talaku Tjampitjinpa and her brothers were Tiwil Tjangala and Mulginga Tjangala. Her grandmother's name was Mantuwa Nungurrayi and her grandfather was Tiwil Tjangala.
Narputta is a sister of Riley Major and George Tjangala, both of whom had long associations with Papunya Tula Artists. She came to Haasts Bluff as a little girl, and travelled back and forth from Jay Creek with her brother Riley Major, collecting dingo scalps for trading.
Nangala started her artistic career by assisting her husband, Timmy Tjungurrayi Jugadai, who painted in the mid 1970s and into the 1980s. She started painting her own stories on canvas in 1992 and participated in the joint Kintore/Haasts Bluff painting project. This project culminated in an exhibition of these works by many artists titled Minyma Tjukurrpa: Kintore/Haasts Bluff Canvas Project, at Tandanya, Adelaide 1995.
The artist has participated in a number of group exhibitions from Haasts Bluff and held her first solo exhibition at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne in 1996. The following year Nangala's Karrkurrutinytja won the introduced media section of the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award. Her work was strongly featured in exhibition, Mythology and Reality: Contemporary Aboriginal Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, which travelled to Europe and Israel in 2003.
