Lily Kelly Napangardi was born at Haasts Bluff in 1948 and moved to the newly established settlement of Papunya in the 1960s. During her time there she began painting, assisting her husband Norman Kelly, who was then an established artist. Kelly returned to Mt Liebig with her husband in the early 1980's when she began painting in her own right. A senior law woman of the Watiyawanu community, near Haasts Bluff, north-west of Alice Springs she is responsible for the Women's Dreaming story associated with Kunajarrayi, and is now teaching younger women traditional dancing and singing. Kelly won the Northern Territory Art Award for painting in 1986, and the General Painting Category at the 20th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2003 . In 2006, she was named as one of Australia’ s 50 most collectable artists by the Australian Art Collector Magazine.
Her paintings depict her country's sand hills, its winds and the desert environment after rain. They are a bird’s eye depiction showing the movement of the sand across the sand hills, at her country near Kintore. The story was passed from her grandfather.
