(b Pikilyi, N. Territory, ?1947–9). Australian Aboriginal painter. He was an initiated man of the Warlpiri tribe and one of the most articulate spokesmen of the Papunya Tula artists. Nelson studied at Yuendumu mission school, leaving at 13 after tribal initiation to work across the Territory in the cattle industry. After a period in the army he returned to his family at Yuendumu, then in 1976 married and moved to neighbouring Papunya. For seven years he observed the work of the older artists while working for the Papunya Council and occasionally assisting his uncle Jack Tjupurrula (b c. 1925) on his paintings before beginning to paint for himself in 1983. Nelson’s bold designs, often incorporating several Dreaming stories on one canvas, with subtle infilling of multicoloured dots and with delicate brushwork, earned immediate attention. He won the National Aboriginal Art Award in 1984 and in 1985 produced the painting Five Dreamings (Melbourne, priv. col., see 1988–90 exh. cat., p. 103), which became one of the most reproduced works of Australian art of the 1980s. He exhibited in the Sydney Biennale of 1986. Two solo exhibitions in Melbourne followed, and he gained wider recognition when his design was selected for the mosaic (196 m*196 m) in the forecourt of Australia’s new Parliament House in Canberra, and when he hand-painted an M3 race car (1989) in the BMW Art Car Project. He was custodian of the country around Mt Singleton, which accounts for the Possum, Snake, Two Kangaroos, Flying Ant and Yam Dreamings depicted in his paintings. In 1993 he was awarded the Australia Medal for services to Aboriginal art.

• Nelson Tjakamarra, Michael
  • Aboriginal Australia, §IV, 1: Contemporary painting and drawing