Painting by Tjunka Lewis

View this record on the National Museum of Australia's website

Type: Acrylic paintings
Place: Wanarn Community, Western Australia, Australia; Warakurna Community, Western Australia, Australia
Materials: Acrylic paint, Cardboard
Collection: Wanarn - Pampa Painting Program collection
Accession number: 2017.0050.0005

Description

A white and pink acrylic painting on black cardboard featuring vertical rows of dots and a few white swirled lines on the right. Handwritten inscription on the reverse side of the painting reads 'Tjunka Lewis / Warakurna Artists / ... /'.

About the collection

The collection comprises 27 acrylic paintings on cardboard and one acrylic painting on a pillowcase by residents at the Wanarn Aged Care facility. The collection includes artworks by acclaimed artists, such as senior Seven Sisters custodian, Tjapartji Bates (dec.) and Tjunka Lewis (dec.). Other participants painted for the first time. This collection of artworks comes from residents the Wanarn Aged care facility, located at Warnarn community, Ngaanyatjarra Lands, in the Gibson Desert, Western Australia. The facility, which is located on the Seven Sisters songline, is called Kungkarrangkalpa (Seven Sisters) Aged Care. The site was chosen with the intention of allowing residents to be close to the songline. Many acclaimed artists from the Ngaanyatjarra Lands have spent their final days there. The art program is a weekly art therapy workshop and provides an opportunity for younger artists to learn from the elders. This collection of artworks are characteristic of a style known as 'wobbly paintings', a term coined to describe how the shaking hand of elderly artists can be seen in paint. While the paintings are deceptively simple, they condense powerful knowledge of the tjurkurpa (the dreaming) into sparse lines and dots.

Read live from the Museum's Collection API (12/11/2026, 6:53:28 am). Record last updated by the Museum 2025-10-07. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.