(b Kooralia, N. Territory, ?1929–39; d Alice Springs, 1984). Australian Aboriginal painter and wood-carver. He was the initiated man of the Anmatyerre/Aranda language group. Leura grew up on Napperby station and worked as a stockman before moving to Papunya with his young family when the settlement was established in the late 1950s. There he worked as a carver of wooden snakes and goannas renowned in central Australia for their brilliant craftsmanship. When painting began at Papunya in 1971, he quickly joined the group and became the close friend and assistant of the art teacher Geoffrey Bardon (b 1940). He also enlisted his younger brother CLIFFORD POSSUM. In the mid-1970s the brothers’ collaboration on a series of large topographical paintings incorporating several Dreaming stories in map-like configuration on one canvas was of considerable importance. It was one of the factors that gave the painting from Papunya a greater appeal to European sensibilities. Leura became custodian of the country known as Nurta on Napperby Creek, and painted the Possum, Yam, Fire, Blue Tongue Lizard, Sun, Moon and Morning Star Dreamings associated with this area. Always prolific, he had a delicacy of touch, and his translucent painterly effects are distinctive even in his earliest works. The sombreness of his work reflects a profound sadness at the loss of the old ways of life.

• Leura Tjapaltjarri, Tim
  • Possum Tjapaltjarri, Clifford