Peg Leg Tjampitjinpa Painting

Stretched Canvas

Peg Leg Tjampitjinpa, was a senior Pintupi painter born around 1920, and lived in the vicinity of Wilkinkarra until his family moved to Yuendumu in 1964. He was appointed a trustee of the Wilkinkarra Land Trust in 1984.

He earned his nickname when an infected spear-wound from a tribal fight resulted, after four months of suffering and being carried by his father-in-law, in the loss of his leg from the knee down. He walked with the help of a long pole, He and his family, including over a dozen children from his several wives, had no contact with Western Civilisation until 1957, when they encountered a Northern Territory Welfare Branch patrol.

In 1996, during a visit to his lifelong friend Pinta Pinta Tjapanangka in Kintore, he started painting works reminiscent of the first Papunya Tula artists, focusing on Tingari designs in a limited pallette of reds, blacks and whites.  Pegleg’s paintings feature a limited palette and focus on Tingari design. His style is the of that of many Pintupi works of the early 1970’s, though unmistakably his own. Using rough outlines of traditional designs, usually with unmixed ochres on dark backgrounds, Pegleg depicts the traditional Tingari Men’s Dreaming cycle.

His Artwork is represented in many  major public and private collections in Australia and also  Overseas  , and was  featured in an important exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, “Papunya Tula – Genesis and Genius” in 2000.