Biography

Amanda Napangardi Dixon was in born in 1985, in Alice Springs Hospital, NT. At the time her parents were living in Lajamanu, an Aboriginal community in semi-arid country on the edge of the Tanami Desert, halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs—592 km from Yuendumu. Amanda attended the local Lajamanu school and when she finished school she worked at the Clinic and later at the Shire Office. Both her parents have passed away but she has a Grandma, Judy Walker, who still lives in Lajamanu and paints with the local Art Centre, Warnayaka Art. She has a brother and a sister, Polly Anne Napangardi Dixon. Amanda moved to Yuendumu in 2015 and is “becoming a Yuendumu local”.

In 2016 Amanda began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu. She began using traditional iconography but because of her love for pattern and colour she has developed an individualist style using pattern in a variety of contexts to depict her traditional jukurrpa. She paints her Grandfather’s Yarla Jukurrpa (Bush Potato Dreaming) and her father’s Warna Jukurrpa (Snake Dreaming), stories that were passed down to her by her parents and their parents before them for millennia.

When Amanda is not painting, she enjoys playing basketball and softball and going hunting with friends and family.