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Elizabeth Marks Nakamarra |
Elizabeth paints the Tingari cycle stories, which sing of the ancestor women who travelled the vast country performing ritual ceremonies to bring the land into being. Her paintings are distinguished by their strong lines, unique, highly formalised treatment, and their careful, limited use of colour.
Biography
Born about 1959, Elizabeth Nakamarra Marks lives to the east of Kintore, in the Northern Territory. Her languages are Pintupi, Luritja and, from her mother's side, Warlpiri. She is a member of Papunya Tula Artists Pty. Ltd., one of the later generation of women artists to join this important, Aboriginal owned and operated cooperative, based in Kintore and Kiwirrkura. Elizabeth learnt to paint from her late husband, Old Mick Namarrari and from other Papunya artists, such as Uta Uta, Pinta Pinta, and Turkey Tolson, and is deeply immersed in following and celebrating her inherited Dreamings. Elizabeth's work is now held in many important collections, both in Australia and overseas.
The Paintings
Elizabeth paints the kangaroo and the bush turkey Dreamings, and the Tingari cycle stories, which sing of the ancestor women who travelled the vast land performing ritual ceremonies to bring certain features of the land in to being. Her paintings are distinguished by their strong lines, unique, highly formalised treatment, and their careful, limited use of colour. In some work she uses the more easily recognisable marks of the Pintupi painters to show the eternal placement of ancestor figures and their journeys in the stylised ochre landscape, for example, 'U' shapes to indicate women in ritual camps, and the concentric roundel for a rock hole or sacred site.
Elizabeth is, however, becoming better known for her Escher-like, hypnotic paintings, which have moved far away from these earlier depictions and are perhaps closer to sand painting. These works use one colour, such as a light blue, dusty red, grey, or earthy brown with a contrasting lighter hue, on a black background. The straight lines (or sometimes long curves), which are made up of dragged dots, are drawn at ninety degrees to each other to build retreating and advancing line-tunnels. The eye gets tricked in these convolutions, drawn in to follow a line to its conclusion, and falls in and out of the maze.
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