Lola Nampijinpa Brown

"My Dreaming, My Grandmother, Mother and Aunty at Willowra, they taught me to paint my Dreaming."

Lola Nampijinpa Brown was born in Ti-Tree, a small community in the Northern Territory of Australia, 193 km north of Alice Springs. When she was a little girl her mother and father took her to Willowra, a tiny community about 420 km north west of Alice Springs, where she grew up. Lola went to school there, and then to Alice Springs, where she attended high school, before moving to Mount Allen, where she married her promised husband. Lola was married for 25 years. While living in Mount Allen Lola was an active member of the museum. She made music, sticks, and necklaces, and painted coolamons and beads. Lola has seven children and eleven grandchildren. Her three sons still live in Mount Allen and her daughters live in Willowra, Tennant Creek and Mount Allen. She likes to visit her children whenever she can.

In 1994 Lola returned to Willowra for a short time before returning in 1997 to Mount Allen to live with her children. At Mount Allen she began painting, but, as there is no longer a museum and art centre in Mount Allen, the amount of work she could do was dependent on the availability of materials. In 2002 Lola moved to the Aboriginal community of Yuendumu, about 290 km northwest of Alice Springs, to paint with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation. It was here that she met and married her present husband, Christopher Japangardi Poulson, who also is a well know artist who paints with Warlukurlangu Artists.

Lola has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists since 2002. She attends the art centre every weekday and paints her Water Dreaming stories, which relate directly to her land, its features and animals. These stories were passed down by her grandmother, mother and aunty and their parents before them for millennia.