Biography

Chelsea Nangala Watson was born in Darwin, in the top end of the Northern Territory of Australia. Her parents, who live in Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs, returned home soon after Chelsea’s birth. Chelsea has grown up in Yuendumu; attends the local school; enjoys studying and participates in school sports, playing footy, soft ball and basketball.

Chelsea was born into a long line of artists. Her grandparents, Reva Nungarrayi Dickson and Bernard Japanangka Watson; and her mother Louise Napangardi Watson, are respected artists who paint with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu. Chelsea has spent most of her life watching and listening to her family paint and share their Jukurrpa stories, so it is no surprise, that she now paints for Warlukurlangu Artists.  

She paints her father’s Jukurrpa stories, Dreamings which relate directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. These stories were passed down to her by her parents and their parents before them for millennia. She uses traditional iconography, to depict her traditional Jukurrpa.