Cherina Nampijinpa Singleton

Cherina Nampijinpa Singleton was born in 1986 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia. She is the daughter of Corinne and Patrick Singleton and has one brother Aaron. She is also the grand-daughter of Helen Nampijinpa Robertson, a well-known artist who paints with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation. Cherina attended the local school in Yuendumu before moving to Alice Spring to attend Yirara College, an Aboriginal Boarding College. After she finished schooling she returned to Yuendumu and shortly after began painting. She has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 2001. She paints her father’s Jukurrpa stories, Dreamings which relate directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. These stories were passed down to her by her father and his father’s father before him for millennia. Cherina uses traditional designs and icons but with an unrestricted palette, ”I love working with colour”, to depict her traditional Jukurrpa. Cherina is married and has three children, two girls and one boy. When she is not busy looking after her husband and children and when she is not painting she likes to go hunting for goanna.