Dorothy Napangardi Robinson

Dorothy Napangardi, (c.1952-2013), is a prolific Australian Aboriginal artist from Mina Mina.
After growing up "bush" with no exposure to white man, she moved with her family to Yuendumu settlement (where her father is still a senior law-giver), and in 1987 began painting. She had little formal schooling, but was instructed in the historic Dreaming of her people. The Tjukurrpa theme, generally, is the inseparability of the self from the environment, and the stories usually include travelling.

Dorothy found an original voice and style which revolves around dotted representations of the landscape around Mina Mina.These works explore different and intricate representations of its salt pans and sand hills. Whilst Dorothy does sometimes use colour, it tends to be only in a subtle and minimalistic manner. Her art concentrates on movement to capture the viewer, and shows her remarkable spatial sense and compositional ability.

In 2001 Napangardi won first prize in the 18th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award Festival, Australia for her work Salt on Mina Mina. Her dotted representations of the landscape around her country are truly captivating and have made her one of the most well-known Australian Aboriginal artists.