Michelle Butler b. 1992

Michelle Butler Nakamarra is an emerging artist from Central Australia. Born in Mparntwe (Alice Springs) in 1992, Michelle grew up primarily between the remote communities of Tjukurla in Western Australia and Mimili in the Anangu Pitjanjtatara Yankunyjtatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia. She also spent a great deal of time in Patjarr community, south-west of Walungurru (Kintore), with her “grandmother”, artist Manupa Butler (c.1936-2018). Michelle’s other grandmother is acclaimed artist, Carol Nampitjinpa. Michelle has strong connections to the Ward family, a strong painting family from the Western desert region, including artists Nungawarra, Gracie and Janie Ward, as well as acclaimed artist and senior Ngangkaṟi (traditional healer) ‘Dr’ George Ward Tjungurrayi (c1945-2023). Michelle is also related to some of the founding artists during the emergence of the Western Desert art movement from Papunya in the 1970s, such as her two grandfathers, George ‘Hairbrush’ Tjapaltjarri and Tommy Lowry Tjapaltjarri (c.1935-1987).

As a young girl, Michelle was constantly around her family members, watching them paint and listening to their stories. In her late teens, Michelle began painting her own designs. The stories Michelle paints have been passed to her from both her grandfather and grandmother’s sides. She often paints bush tucker and water stories from her grandmother’s country around Tjukurla, Patjarr and Mimili, as well as depicting aspects of the famous Seven Sisters Dreaming songline that intersects the entire continent, as the sisters travel from west to east. In this painting, Michelle depicts Minyma Inmaku, women’s ceremony. Michelle maps the topography of her ancestral country from a bird’s-eye point of view, depicting certain sacred women’s sites in the remote Western Desert. Inma, ceremony, involves a collection of ritual traditions for Aboriginal women, and include modalities of rhythm, song, dance, and application of traditional body paint designs  - all intricate pieces of a culturally and spiritually complex whole. These sites hold stories of travelling ancestors and creator spirits who would pass through and gather at certain places to rest or perform ceremony.

Michelle is coming into her own as a young artist, utilising the traditional dot technique and iconography of the desert art movements and making it her own with her intentional use of negative space to create high-contrast, vibrant works with contemporary colour palettes. Michelle’s paintings are gaining popularity, with a number of galleries exhibiting her bold works which are rich in colour and story.