Wenten rubuntja biography of nancy

Wenten Rubuntja was born near Hay's Creek, the son of Bob Rubuntja. He initially began painting in the Hermannsburg School Landscape style before transitioning to dot work paintings using acrylics.

By Michael Jackson

The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne,
Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge . . .
—Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls

Painting runs in my family, but not religion. My mother’s maternal uncle, Walter Tempest, was a late nineteenth-century watercolorist and member of the British Royal Academy, and my mother was an acclaimed painter of abstract landscapes. In my early twenties, I vacillated between painting and writing before deciding on anthropology as my vocation. In recent years, my daughters, Heidi and Freya, have excelled in the arts I chose not to pursue.¹ Where some people bear witness to a religious tradition, sustained over many generations, I marvel at the artistic trait that has given my family members a very present help in times of trouble. My mother’s accidental landscapes often appear to be outward expressions of her inward struggle with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis.² The death of Heidi’s mother when she was thirteen, and her attenuated ties with her homeland following our decision to embark on a new life in Australia, undoubtedly found expression in Heidi’s New Zealand landscapes. And Freya frequently turned to painting and drawing when the confusions of her adolescent years