Milatjari Pumani began painting late in life, bringing decades of
knowledge of Antara, her ancestral homeland near Mimili, to a practice that became highly influential within Mimili Maku Arts
and across subsequent generations of her family.
Ngura Walytja, Antara
depicts the rockholes and hills of Antara and the Maku Tjukurpa (Witchetty Grub Dreaming), a major ancestral narrative for this Country. Pumani developed an open, organic visual language, with sweeping fields of colour interwoven with dotted passages and sinuous lines that evoke the contours and rhythms of Country without describing them literally.
Her eldest daughter, Ngupulya Pumani, began painting a year later, followed by Betty Kuntiwa Pumani and younger generations including Sandra and Josina Pumani. What emerged was a remarkable matrilineal artistic lineage: shared knowledge and responsibility for Country carried forward not through stylistic repetition, but through distinctly individual ways of painting it.