Country and birthplace Yarrungkanyi, north-west of Yuendumu. Paddy Carroll’s father was Warlpiri/Anmatyerre, and his mother Luritja/Warlpiri, her country being the site of Winparrku near Haasts Bluff. Paddy grew up in this area, the family coming in to Haasts Bluff and Yuendumu to collect rations of bread and tea. His father was shot by Europeans in the Coniston Massacre of 1928. Paddy knew little of his father’s country; his mother refused to speak of it after the murder. Two of Paddy’s brothers also fled to Queensland. They finally met up again when Paddy was a young man in his early twenties, and they found themselves in the same army unit stationed in Elliott near Darwin during World War II. Jimmy Kitson , a leading ceremonial figure in the Willowra community, is also Paddy’s brother. After the war, Paddy lived in Alice Springs and Darwin, working across the country as a carpenter and stockman. He worked for thirty years at Narwietooma station, droving cattle across the Tanami and helping to lay telegraph lines in remote areas. He began painting in about 1977 when John Kean was running Papunya Tula Artists and Paddy and his family were living at Three Mile Bore, an outstation of Papunya. David Corby was probably influential in him starting. Paddy’s extensive ceremonial knowledge is indicated by the range of Dreaming stories depicted in his paintings, which include: Witchetty Grub, Wallaby, Yala (Bush Potato), Possum, Goanna, Woman, Man, Malyippi (Sweet Potato), Wapiti (Sweet Potato), Yawalyurra (Bush Grapes), Mukaki and other Bush Tucker stories, Carpet Snake, and Ngatijirri (Budgerigar). For a time, he lived at Inapanu outstation, near Mt Lori, and sometimes in Papunya. He came to Sydney in 1981 with Dinny Nolan to make the first sand painting to be seen outside the Western Desert – in the grounds of the SH Ervin Gallery. His paintings were part of Painters of the Western Desert , Papunya Tula Artist’s first three man show with Clifford Possum and Uta Uta Tjangala in the 1984 Adelaide Festival of Arts, attended by all three artists. In 1991 he travelled to America with Dinny Nolan Tjampitjinpa, visiting colleges and Native American communities on a tour organised by poets Billy Marshall-Stoneking and Nigel Roberts. Paddy Carroll once remarked to a journalist puzzling over the meaning of a painting’s iconography that “we have had to learn your language, now it is time you learned ours “. Paddy and his second wife, Ruby Nangala, lived in their new house at Three Mile, just north of Papunya and later at Five Mile outstation.

Writers:

Johnson, Vivien Note: primary biographer

Date written:

1994

Last updated:

2011