Timmy Payungka Tjapangati

Who was Timmy Payungka Tjapangati?

Timmy Payungka was was an Australian Aboriginal artist from the Papunya Tula school of painting. He was born at Parayirpilynga near of Wilkinkarra.

He met his wife at Warburton. His family was met by a welfare patrol at Yarrana, west of Kintore, Northern Territory, and brought in to Papunya early in the 1960s. He was one of the original painting men with Geoffrey Bardon. He moved to Kintore in 1981 and was active in later establishing the settlement at Kiwirrkura, closer to his country.

He was an important law man, knowledgeable of many stories and rituals. According to Daphne Williams of Papunya Tula, a trip west from Alice to Kintore with Timmy could take two or three times as long as a trip without him, so great as his enthusiasm for stopping along the way to tell his companions the stories of the land they passed through. He taught his daughter, Lorna Napanangka, to paint, and she is proving to be a talent equal to her father.

A solo exhibition of his work was displayed at Aboriginal and South Pacific Gallery in Sydney.

In his last years, Timmy lived in Alice Springs and was assisted in his painting by his wife, Emily, but he remained among the greatest of the Papunya painters until his death on 7 May 2000.