Kapi Tjukurrpa – Kalipinypa

This painting depicts Water Dreaming at Kalipinypa. The painting tells the story of an important rain making ceremony involving the rainmakers to invoke storms. Kalipinypa is a powerful storm that brings lightning, thunderclouds and rain to rejuvenate the earth, filling rock holes, clay pans and creeks. It has the power to create new life and growth upon the land. Meandering lines depict the water flowing throughout the country and between waterholes. Background dotting represents the rejuvenating effect the rain has on the land, bringing out the bush food plants and providing easy access to water.

 

Dennis Nelson Tjakamarra is the son of Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, one of the founders of the desert painting movement, and his second wife Gladys (Yawitji) Napanangka, who was among the first group of women at Papunya to paint for Papunya Tula Artists. Dennis remembers going “after school or smoko time” to watch the painters at work. He says his father taught him to paint: “Use brush – cut ‘im – he learn me. When I’m a little boy he sat me down in the gallery”. Dennis’ paintings are strongly reminiscent of his famous father’s early works: “I carry on his style. I know.” Tjupurrula also taught him his stories and took him to the sites: the Kalipinypa Kapi Tjukurrpa (Water Dreaming) with “lots of birds playing round after the rain”; the “Death Spirit [that] comes from underground in the middle of the desert” and Tjikari where the “Men Dreaming [are] still there now”. Dennis painted for Papunya Tula Artists in the early 1990s, then for Warumpi Arts before its closure in 2004, and is now painting at Papunya Tjupi Arts. During the 1980s, Dennis illustrated a number of Pintupi-Luritja educational resources for the newly opened bilingual Papunya School.