Maureen Hudson Nampajinpa b. 1959

Maureen Hudson Nampajinpa was born in 1959 near Mt Allan, about 280km northwest of Alice Springs, on an Aboriginal owned and operated cattle station called Yuelamu. She attended school at Yuendumu community and later returned to Mt Allan, where she worked as a teaching assistant for several years. Maureen began painting in 1981 while surrounded by senior artists, namely her cousin, the renowned Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. She now lives in Adelaide but frequently returns to Mount Allan and Alice Springs to visit her family.

Maureen is a proud Warlpiri woman who draws great inspiration from the landscape. She often depicts topographic features of her homeland, such as undulating sandhills and winding waterways - she describes painting as ‘her first love’.  As a child, she was taught traditional practices, gathering bush tucker and medicine, hunting for kangaroos and digging for water. The Dreaming stories that Maureen paints originate from Warlurkurlangu, ‘Bushfire Country’. These Dreamings were passed down to her from family members and include the Emu, Fire, and Kanmarra (Bush Onion) stories that she learned from her father’s side of the family. She also learned traditional customs and stories from her mother’s strong involvement in women’s ceremonial practices.

Maureen has been an artist in residence at the Mulgara Gallery in Yulara (Uluru) in recent years. She has also participated in collaborative works, notably a ‘Seven Sisters Dreaming’ piece with Alice Springs artist Maggie Urban that exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane in 1993. Maureen has four children, of which her two daughters, Jillian and Gwenda, have also taken to painting.