Biography

“I like to paint my father’s and my mother’s Jukurrpa.”

Rene Napangardi Dixon was born in 1975 in Darwin Hospital, far from her home in Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 1,749 km south of Darwin and 290 km north-west from Alice Springs. She began her schooling at the Yuendumu primary school and finished her schooling at Yirara College, an Aboriginal boarding college in Alice Springs. After leaving school Rene travelled, “…looking around countryside, staying with family and learning about country.” In Kintore, she met her partner and they had a daughter. In 1989 she moved to Nyirripi, a remote Aboriginal community 130 km north west of Yuendumu, with her children, and to be with family.

She has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 2009. She mainly paints her father’s Mina Mina Jukurrpa (Mina Mina Dreaming –  Ngalyipi), but can also paint her mother’s Janganpa Jukurrpa (Possum Dreaming). Mina Mina Jukurrpa relates directly to an area west of Nyirripi and is an important women’s ceremony site. Her ‘dreamings’ were passed down to her by her parents and their parents before them for millennia. Rene uses traditional shapes and an unrestricted palette to develop a modern interpretation of her traditional culture.