Esther is the granddaughter of Naata Nungarrayi and Nancy Ross
Nungurrayi, two highly regarded artists who were trailblazers as female artists
in the early days of the Western Desert art movement. Esther uses the traditional dotting technique associated with the Western
Desert contemporary art movement to depict a sacred rockhole and water soakage
site called Marrapinti, nestled in the remote tali (sandhill) desert country, west
of Kiwirrkurra in WA. Marrapinti is connected to a number of other soakage or rockhole sites, which often
feature as resting places in both men’s and women’s ancestral stories.
Marrapinti in particular is deemed a deeply sacred women’s ceremonial site in
the Seven Sisters and Tingari Dreaming songlines, marking a place where
ancestral women of the Nangala and Napangati “skin” groups camped, performed
ceremony, and collected bush foods like kampurarrpa, desert raisins, while
travelling east towards Wilkinkarra, Lake Mackay.