Biography

Sentarra Nakamarra was born in 2006 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Nyirripi, a remote Aboriginal community 450 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She is the daughter of Cecily Napanangka Marshall and Evan Jungarrayi Sims and the granddaughter of Eric Marshall and Janie Rice. Sentarra has one brother and lives in Nyirripi with her family. She attends the local school, and first came to the art centre in Nyirripi as part of a school assignment to learn about her family history and the dreaming stories passed down by her parents and grandparents. She enjoyed painting so much, she continues to paint at the Art Centre.

 She has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu and Nyirripi, since 2021. She paints her mother’s and grandmother’s Pikilyi Jukurrpa (Vaughhan Springs Dreaming), stories relating directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. They have been passed down through the generations for millennia. She uses an unrestricted palette and blends her own patterns with ancestral motifs to depict her traditional Jukurrpa.

When she is not studying or painting, she enjoys going out bush or going to organised sports and discos, watching and listening to music and keeping an eye on the littles nearby.