Imitjala Curley b. 1953

Imitjala Curley was born in 1953 in Pukatja (Ernabella) in the expansive Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands of Central Australia. She grew up around Ernabella Mission, which operated as a sheep station until the Presbyterian Church took over the pastoral lease in 1937. Some years later, her family moved to Kaltjiti (formerly Fregon) after it was established in 1961 as a cattle station.

Imitjala has been developing her artmaking practice since the early 1960s, when she began working in the craft room of Kaltjiti Arts. Her beginnings there were in weaving, and the gestural freedom of her mature brushwork — so different from the fine dotting of many desert painters — carries something of that early training in the movement of fibre and hand. She only began painting on canvas in 2009, and since then has contributed artwork to several important exhibitions. She is a well-collected artist, instantly recognisable by her intuitive and gestural brushwork style.

Imitjala is a respected Pitjantjatjara elder and senior traditional woman. She is also a ngangkari — a traditional healer in the Anangu way — a role and body of knowledge passed to her through her own family, and one that marks the depth of the cultural authority she carries into her painting. She is the custodian for many important Dreaming stories including the Ngintaka (Lizard-man), Ngapari (Sugar Leaf at Watarru), and the Minyma Kututja story from Walytjitjata, a small homeland just over the Northern Territory border, about 46 kilometres north of Kalka. Imitjala is connected to the Walytjitjata Dreaming, Kampurarpa Tjukurrpa, through her mother, Puni Puni.

At Kaltjiti Arts, Imitjala paints among a remarkable senior generation — alongside Witjiti George, Taylor Cooper, Manitjanu Lennon, Matjangka Norris and Kathy Maringka — and these elders regularly join forces on major collaborative canvases that double as teaching: younger artists learn painting technique and the discipline of storytelling at the senior artists' side. Her own major works have travelled far; her large 2016 canvas Ngayuku Ngura (My Country): Walytjitjata entered the Le Pley Collection in Western Australia, its Kaltjiti Arts certificate carrying her own words — "Tjitji Tjuta, this is part of the Minyma Kututja story of Walytjitjata."

Imitjala was married to Ken Curley, now deceased, and has five children — all daughters — some of whom have become esteemed artists in their own right, such as Maria, Madeline and Meredith Curley.