Marita Napurrurla Marshall

Marita Napanangka Marshall was born in 1990 in Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She is the daughter of Monica Napaljarri Nelson and Bruce Marshall (Dec). She has one sister and two brothers. She attended the local School in Yuendumu before going to Yirara College, a boarding school for Indigenous students from remote communities. When she left school, she returned home to Yuendumu and worked for the Community Development Employment Project – Centre Link.

Marita began painting for Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu and Nyirripi, in 2008, when she first left school. She paints her father’s Yuparli Jukurrpa (Bush Banana Dreaming), ‘Dreamings” that 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. She loves painting and loves colour, and uses an unrestricted palette to depict her traditional iconography, at the same time developing a modern individualist style, using pattern and design in a variety of contexts.

Marita moved to Nyirripi in 2018 to be with her mother. When she’s not painting, she loves to go out hunting with family and friends.