Biography

Lynette Nampijinpa Granites was born in 1945 at Mt Doreen Station. Mt Doreen Station is an extensive cattle breeding station about 55 km west of Yuendumu, an Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. When Lynette was a little girl she grew up and was educated at the Baptist Mission in Yuendumu. She married first her promised husband and had two children and later married her second husband Harry Nelson, a Warlpiri elder and former Yuendumu Council President. In 1973 Lynette began working at the Health Centre in Yuendumu. She did extensive training and soon became a Health worker. Her job took her to Darwin, Alice Springs and Adelaide where she attended workshops and conferences. She is now retired. Lynette has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 1987. She paints her father’s and grandfather’s Jukurrpa stories, Dreamings which relate directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. These stories were told to her by her sisters, particularly her big sister. “All my sisters are gone now but they taught me to paint, they told me my stories. What I like about painting is the Dreamings.” When Lynette is not painting she likes to sit down with her grandchildren and tell them the stories her sisters told her.