Born c. 1919 at Napanangkajarra near Yuendumu, Paddy Nelson’s country ran from Yumurrpa to Watikinpirri area, SW of Yuendumu through New Haven station. A Warlpiri speaker, Paddy was a senior ceremonial and religious leader in the Yuednumu community. He was one of the first Yuendumu men to paint with acrylics, and one of the senior men who painted the doors of the school in 1983. With Paddy SIMS, Larry SPENCER Jungarrayi and JIMIJA Jungarrayi, he worked on the 1985 Star Dreaming painting whose purchase by the Australian National Gallery from the Yuendumu artists’ first show in the eastern states, helped to launch the new painting enterprise in the local art world. His main site was Ngama, a Snake Dreaming place. He painted Yarla (Big Yam) and Ngarlajiyi (Small Yam), Warna (Snake), Ngapa (Water), Karrku (Mt Stanley ochre mines), Janganpa (Possum), Mukaki (Bush Plum), Karnta (Women’s) and Watijarra (Two Men) Dreamings. A prolific painter, distinctive for his fluid impulsive brushwork and subtly different renderings of his classic iconography, his work was shown in almost every exhibition of Warlukurlangu Artists from the mid ’80s onwards and in major touring exhibitions of Aboriginal art including Art and Aboriginality (Portsmouth Festival 1987, Sydney Opera House 1988 – Paddy Nelson’s painting appears on the cover of the catalogue) and Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles etc. 1989-90). In 1988, Paddy Nelson was one of five Warlpiri men from Yuendumu selected by the Power Gallery, Sydney University, to travel to Paris to create a ground painting installation at the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in May 1989. Several of Paddy’s relatives, including his wife Daisy NELSON and her sons Michael Jagamara NELSON and Bronson Jakamarra NELSON, are also artists of reknown.
- Writers:
- Johnson, Vivien
- Date written:
- 1994
- Last updated:
- 2011
