Multi award-winning painter Jimmy Donegan was born at Yanpan, a rockhole near Ngatuntjarra Bore around 1940. He grew up as a bush baby in country around Blackstone and Mantamaru (Jamieson) in Western Australia. Jimmy has family links throughout the Pitjantjatjara lands; his wife is from a place near Kalka. Jimmy brought his wife and children to live at Blackstone because of his tie to that country. He is widowed and has four children. He returned to Kalka community to live with his children and close to his sister Molly Nampitjin Miller.

Mr Donegan's carvings of spears, spear throwers and boomerangs are prized and much sought after. He is rich in story and a strong man for law and culture. The Australian Art Review November 2006 described his work as "  dazzling compositions of swirling, intensely coloured dots, sometimes crossed by lines signifying the journey of the two snakes above and below the surface of the earth”.  

In 2010 Jimmy Donegan was the winner of both the Best Painting award and the overall award of the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award.