Tjukurrtjanu: Origins of Western Desert Art

I think of Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi as a quietly friendly, good family man, anxious to help, and as a singing, painting, dancing and hunting man. When first I met him in 1974 he was tracking a wounded emu, his quick eyes seeing the occasional spot of blood, and both hands held out from his sides in the form of an emu’s foot as he showed others its route. (R. G. (Dick) Kimber, 2011)

Shorty Lungkata was born at Walukirritjinya south of Kaakurutintjinya (Lake Macdonald), also the place where his father died. He married and came to Haasts Bluff around 1948 and moved to Papunya in the late 1950s. He was regarded within the Pintupi community at Papunya as one of the leading senior men, well known for his hunting and dancing skills and an authority on ritual matters.

Shorty was one of the last Pintupi men to join the original painting group at Papunya. His early paintings flow with gesture and a dancer’s vitality of movement and are imbued with a strong sense of place. He spoke almost no English and when he needed to convey his ideas to Geoffrey Bardon, would have his fellow countrymen translate.

Shorty moved to Walungurru in the early 1980s to be closer to his birth country in the Gibson Desert. He painted only a few works during the 1980s, but his legacy endures in the work of his daughter Wintjiya Morgan Napaltjarri and his stepdaughter Linda Syddick, whom he taught to paint.