Kelly Napanagka Michaels Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1965 -

Kelly Michaels lives in Yuendumu, an Aboriginal settlement located 290 kms north west of Alice Springs. She attended the local school in Yuendumu. She is married to the local Indigenous Police Aid. They have four daughters. She is a grandmother and spends a lot of time caring for her grandchildren. Kelly also loves playing softball and basketball and is a keen compeditor at the annual Yuendumu Sports weekend. As often as possible she travels to Nyirripi a settlement 160 kms west of Yuendumu where two of her daughters live. Kelly loves to spend time hunting for traditional bush foods in the countryside surrounding Yuendumu and Nyirrpi. She has been painting with the art centre since 1987. She paints the stories which are directly related to her traditional country. These stories have been passed down through her family for millenia.

In contrast to the other early epicentres of desert painting, such as Papunya and Lajamanu, the painting movement at Yundumu did not coalesce around senior men, but began in 1983 through the efforts of a group of senior Warlpiri women. Encouraged by the anthropologist Françoise Dussart, the women helped forge the dynamic ’Yuendumu style’, which, as Judith Ryan has noted, was “characterised by vibrant colour, large brush-strokes and an almost messy, gestural freedom.” In 1985, the artists formed Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, through which they have refined the style, adding a level of accomplishment and elegance, while retaining the intensity of colour and spontaneity of design that defined the early movement. Subsequent generations of Yuendumu women have gained international acclaim as artists, including Maggie and Judy Napangardi Watson, Bessie Nakamarra Sims and Betsy Napangardi Lewis. Despite generational change and aesthetic transformation, the presence of Mina Mina in Warlpiri art has remained an iconic constant.

It is this legacy that is taken up in the paintings of Kelly Napanangka Michaels. Born in the late 1960s, Michaels heard the Jukurrpa stories from the elders, and saw them painted with passion and dedication by her artistic forebears. Now, she passes these stories onto her children and grandchildren, retelling them in a kaleidoscopic explosion of colour. The influence of her elders runs through her work; the dominant iconographies of Warlpiri painting are clearly present, as is the characteristic Yuendumu palette of pinks, mauves, purples and blues. However, this is not a slavish form of imitation. In the paintings of Michaels, influence exists as an aesthetic undercurrent that bubbles to the surface like the spiritual residue of the ancestors that informs the landscape. The influence of her artistic precursors becomes a song that infuses the canvas, filling it with the authority of cultural continuity and uniting it with the performative actions of song and ceremony that connect the Warlpiri to the Jukurrpa.

In Michaels’ depictions of Mina Mina, two key elements of the story dominate: the ceremonial dancing skirts (Majarrdi) and the edible fungus (Jinti-parnta) collected by the women on their journey. Majarrdi and Jinti-parnta are painted with a jutting angular intensity, which makes them appear to quiver across the canvas. Using extremes of contrasting colours (including a distinctive use of black and white outlines), Michaels creates a fluttering tension between foreground and background that makes the Majarrdi appear to float above the canvas as though suspended by invisible dancers. This creates an ethereal sense of spiritual presence, while the thickly painted ground of the canvas anchors them to the temporal materiality of the landscape.