Kim Butler Naparrula Art for Sale at Auction

Kim Butler Napurrula is a Pintupi artist who lives between Alice Springs in Central Australia and Kiwirrkura on the Western Australian side of the Central Desert. Her family has a strong association with the Desert art movement. Kim Butler Napurrula is the daughter of Anatjari Tjakamarra, one of the founding members and senior artists of the emergent Papunya Tula artist group of the 1970s. The family group left the desert in 1966 and walked into the small settlement at Papunya, to join other countrymen who had been moving from the desert to the settlements over the previous twenty five years. Kim Butler Napurrula is the daughter of Katarra Butler Napaltjarri, the second wife of Antjari Tjakamarra. Kim Butler was born probably in the Papunya region in 1971.

Kim Butler Napurrula uses the traditional iconography of the Desert artists to depict the important country of her clan group. These lands run along the Western Australian border country between Kintore and Kiwirrkura. Kim Butler’s paintings focus on the significant Women’s Dreaming sites located throughout this country and the ceremonies associated with those sites. The imagery refers to the ritual processes undertaken by the women including body painting, dancing and singing, as well as their relationship to local food gathering and water sources.

Kim Butler Napurrula generally uses a palette of earth colours that reflect the traditional content of her imagery, the ochres used in ceremonies and the structure of the surrounding country. Aboriginal art status – Established artist.