Phyllis Ningamara was born on Ivanhoe Station and raised on Kimberley cattle stations where her parents worked. She began painting late in life, after raising her family. She is a highly respected senior Miriwoong woman and cultural leader.
Phyllis Ningamara's imagery interprets country and reinterprets the cultural lessons of her childhood as taught to her by her father. Her kaleidoscopes of colour reveal her touch as an exceptional colourist working within the boundaries of traditional natural materials. Her palette of bright ochres – mixed carefully from pigments altered by burning – capture a country sometimes flooding with wet season rains, sometimes as expanses of stony river beds. Creeks, rivers and freshwater springs overflow, multiplying their meander until a patchworked country is crisscrossed with watercourses. Stretches of colourful gerany (stone country) along the river flats, move and shift across the canvas.