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George Ward Tjungurrayi
Born 1940 near Lararra, east of Tjukurla in Western Australia . Now lives and works in Warakurna and Alice Springs.
He began painting for the Papunya Tula Artists around 1976 and is one of the senior painters from the region and now one of the most highly regarded Indigenous painters still working.
A Pintupi man, George Ward's country is north-west of Kintore
through to the Western Australian border. After having met a
welfare patrol, George moved into Papunya where he undertook
various jobs in the community. He began painting for the Papunya
Tula Artists around 1976 and is one of the senior painters from the
region and now one of the most highly regarded Indigenous painters
still working. George is the half-brother of other famous
artists Willy Tjungurrayi and Yala Yala Gibbs.
In 2004 he won the Wynne Prize for Landscape Painting, which
is Australia's most prestigious landscape art award. This
critical recognition has underpinned his influence not only on
Indigenous imagery and culture but on Australian culture more
widely.
His bright colour palette of reds, deep browns, greens and oranges
ingeniously recreates the iconography of the Tingari Cycles and
stories associated with a sacred site near Lake MacDonald, a
dreaming he is custodian of and which is also painted by Willy
Tjungarrayi. Through repetitive use of the Tingari concentric
squares and circles, George's mature works have a sophistication,
strength, and beauty unparalleled in the Indigenous oeuvre.
George Ward's work is held in major collections both in Australia
and abroad, including The Australian National Gallery, Canberra,
The National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of NSW.
