Categories: Papunya Tjupi Art Centre Aboriginal Corporation
Name: Betty Brown Nungarrayi
Community: Papunya
Biography:
Hello my name is Betty Nungarrayi Brown. I was born in Alice Springs and grow up in Papunya. My mother was a first Aboriginal Teacher Assistant at Papunya School for 21 years. She started working in 1971 as a young girl and she retired and started painting, and I just want to say a little of my grandfather. I came from my Grandfather, was a famous Artist of Papunya Tula. He started painting in 1971 and went to visit his beautiful country, the place called Kalipinmpa, with my uncle John Kean Tjakamarra. He was a young fella. Geoffrey Bardon teached the old men how to paint, that's how we are learning from them (old men) how to paint the beautiful design. I went to school here as a little girl and when I was 15 years old I started my schooling at Yirrara College, while I went to Yirrara I used to go to Alice Springs High School and then to Kormilda College in Darwin, I finish my year 12 in Kormilda and went to study in Sydney Macquarie university with Linda Anderson. We studied Community Management. While we were studying there, we saw Geoffrey Bardon. I was talking to him, telling lots of stories that how he started working with famous men at Papunya in 1971. And he made me cry. He showed me a little video about Papunya how he started from Papunya. And after meeting him I came up to Papunya, staying home, and his son came up and saw me, and said, "I lost my father" and I was crying, and he hugged me, and that's the end of my journey, thanks for reading my beautiful stories.
