Born at Jila Well c.1930, her language/tribe is Warlpiri and her country is Kurlurrngalinpa, starting from Granites in the north-west and through to Jila in the south-east. Her Dreamings are Mala, Ngatijirri, Witi, and Ngarrka (Watijarra). She lives at Lajamanu and started painting in 1986 in the Traditional Painting course. At a time when many Western Desert painters have gone to an excess of tidiness, Lily Hargraves’s approach remains intractably expressionist. 'She works like an action painter – quickly, with whatever materials are available, including house paint and poster paints – for the Dreaming, rather than the western art market. When Judith Ryan (Curator of Aboriginal Art for the National Gallery of Victoria) came to Lajamanu, she bought a set of pastels the older women had done, which were hanging in the school library, for the Gallery. The shades are pastel, muted blues and pinks. They were getting very warped in the sun and the heat, and the surface was beginning to flake off. A meeting of the artists agreed to their removal on the basis that Judith Ryan would have them all photographed life-size and framed behind glass for the Lajamanu library. When the paintings were taken down from the walls where they’d been for a couple of years, (Lily) Nungarrayi started tearing hers up – “That ones rubbish, I’m going to do you another one now.” All the other ladies were trying to grab it off her. She didn’t want what she regarded as her bad early work appearing in the National Gallery. She’s a little person with a fiery temperament. She’s called glurpunta, which means “fighting spirit”’. (Christine Nicholls, headmistress at Lajamanu School for most of the ’80s, personal communication, see Paint Up Big , Judith Ryan (NGV, 1990). Maggie (Lily) Hargraves has also worked at the Lajamanu school teaching dancing to the young girls.
- Writers:
- Johnson, Vivien
- Date written:
- 1994
- Last updated:
- 2011
