Biography

Maisie Napurrurla Wayne was born in Ti-Tree, a small service town on the Stuart Highway, 193 km north from Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory of Australia. When Maisie was young she moved to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 north-west of Alice Springs. Maisie lived with her Grandmother. She has grown up and lived most of her life in Yuendumu, attending the local school and marrying her husband and bringing up her children. She is now a widow, but has a large family who care for her. She has two daughters, Elanore and Sara and 6 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren. Maisie is an active member of the community. She works at the Women’s Centre as well as working in Mental Health with the Yuendumu Community Health Centre. She attended a mental health course, a ‘long time ago’, in Darwin and has been working in mental health ever since. Maisie has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre in Yuendumu, since 1994. She paints her Grandfather’s Jukurrpa, Dreamings passed down to her by her father and grandfather, and this father’s father for millennia. She likes painting stories associated with bush tucker dreaming such as Ngurlu Kukurrpa (Native Seed Dreaming) and Yarla Jukurrpa (Bush Potato Dreaming). When Maisie is not painting or spending time with her family, she has siblings who live in Ali-Curung, Nyirripi and Alice Springs, she likes to go hunting for bush tucker.