Debra McDonald
Pintupi · Papunya, NT · b. 1963
Debra Nangala McDonald is a contemporary Pintupi painter working from Papunya, Northern Territory, and a member of one of the Western Desert's most significant artistic families. Her grandfather was Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, a founding Papunya painter, and her mother Martha McDonald is also an established artist. Her principal subject is Watiya Tjuta, the stand of mulga and acacia trees on her family's country near Lake MacDonald in the Gibson Desert, trees traditionally used for making spears and the focus of a women's Dreaming. Where her forebears painted the subject in earth tones, McDonald has developed a markedly contemporary treatment: a severely reduced palette, often black and white or a single colour against ground, with rhythmic vertical tree forms and expanses of negative space that give the work a graphic, almost architectural presence. The result reads comfortably in a modern interior while remaining an unbroken transmission of inherited country and story, and she is regarded as one of the stronger contemporary voices to emerge from Papunya in recent years.