Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula: Aboriginal Artist of the Water Dreaming & Desert Landscapes
Early Life and Cultural Heritage
As a respected law man, storyteller, and painter, Tjupurrula was known as a rainmaker, with a profound spiritual connection to the forces of nature.
Tjupurrula’s principal ancestral site was Kalipinypa, a sacred soakage (natural well) located in the sandhill country approximately 400 kilometers west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory. This site is central to the Kalipinypa Storm Dreaming, one of the most powerful themes in Tjupurrula’s artwork.
According to Warangkula, it was Winpa the Lightning Boss, a powerful ancestral being, who summoned a massive storm from Kalipinypa. As Winpa sang ceremonial verses and stamped the earth, dark clouds gathered, thunder roared, hail pounded the ground, and torrential rain flooded the land. This dramatic event formed a trail of waterholes—marking the path of Winpa’s songline, a sacred route that maps the spiritual and physical creation of the landscape.
He moved into Papunya with his first wife in the 1960s. By the early 1970s and like Long Jack Phillipus and Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri he was a Papunya settlement counselor.
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula and the Rise of the Papunya Art Movement
The Papunya art movement, a pivotal moment in contemporary Indigenous Australian art, began in 1971 when schoolteacher Geoff Bardon arrived at Papunya, a remote community in the Northern Territory. Bardon encouraged local Aboriginal children to express their cultural stories through traditional painting styles. However, he soon discovered that only the senior men were permitted to share these sacred stories through art.
This realization led Bardon to support the formation of a men’s painting group, which included some of the most influential early Western Desert artists—among them was Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula. This group of artists would gather after work to exchange stories, explore ancestral Dreamings, and experiment with new visual techniques rooted in ancient traditions.
In the early stages, the group’s artwork featured traditional Aboriginal symbols and motifs painted on monochrome backgrounds, often on small pieces of composite board. These pioneering artworks marked the birth of the contemporary Aboriginal dot painting movement. This style of painting was dominated by other artists like Kaapa Mbitjana
Although Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula was already a talented artist, the monochrome style of these initial works didn’t fully reflect the depth of his creative potential. It was only as the movement rapidly evolved—allowing for more complexity in color, composition, and storytelling—that Warangkula’s unique artistic voice began to shine.
By the end of 1971, Johnny Warrangkula was experimenting with dotting techniquesand had discovered the plastic qualities of the painting medium and had begun to establish an analogy between the dotted field – traditionally associated with ceremonial decorations – and the depiction of vegetation in the desert landscape. Where as other pioneer artists like Kaapa Mbitjana continued using linework to depict ceremonial objects and customs Johnny started to use of dots to describe vegetation and to infill backgrounds
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula: A Pioneer of Aboriginal Dot Painting and Master of Abstract Expression
By 1972, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula had begun to revolutionize his approach to painting, stepping away from the traditional iconographic elements tied to his inherited cultural rights and Dreaming stories. Instead, he turned his focus toward a more abstract and innovative visual language—characterized by the dynamic interplay of dots, bars, and parallel line patterns that would soon become the hallmark of his signature style.
This shift marked a defining moment in Tjupurrula’s artistic evolution. His work in 1972 represented a creative breakthrough, with a prolific output that solidified his position not just as a skilled contributor, but as a trailblazer in the emerging Papunya Tula movement.
While early on he may have remained in the background compared to other artists in the Papunya collective, Johnny Warangkula’s bold use of color, texture, and rhythm quickly set him apart. His unique, poetic abstraction helped lay the foundation for what is now internationally recognized as contemporary Aboriginal dot painting.
Winpa the rainmaker and the Water Dreaming series.
He was a custodian of the Kalipinya water dreaming which he shared with other Central Desert Aboriginal artists Old Walter and Long Jack.
Right: Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula with a painted ceremonial shield.
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula Middle Period
Johnny Tjupurrula Later Life
By the mid-1980s Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula’s eyesight began to fail. His painting became infrequent and of poorer quality. By the end of the 1990s Warangkula was old and infirm.
These later paintings are not popular with collectors and hold little value.
In the 1990’s he started painting again and produced hundreds of raw expressionistic paintings. These later paintings though were crude and paled compared to his earlier works.
He spent the last years of his life with his wife and children in Papunya. His greatest legacy is the simple but enigmatic dot-dot background. It is so strongly associated with aboriginal art that it is now almost inseparable.
Warangkula Tjupurrula name can also be spelled Warangkula Djupurrula or Warangkula Jupurrula. His Christian name was Johnny
Warangkula Tjupurrula is sometimes spelled, Warungula or Warrangula
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula references
Papunya Tula Art of the Western desert
Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists
Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula Value
My online sales database of Johnny warangkula Tjupurrula artworks contains 98 artworks along with the Auction hammer price.
Many factors go into influencing the value of an artwork much more than only the visual image. The provenance, date painted size and importance of the work within the canon of work are also often crucial factors
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Some Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula Artworks explained
Rain, lightning and stars at night
This painting tells the story of rain and lightning rain and lightning and stars at night at Kaliginypa. The open circles represent the stars. The closed circles are caves in the rock. To the right is a ancestral spirits’s track.
Winpa, an ancestral figure who generated a huge storm at Kalipinypa he is present but hidden. If you look carefully a procession his red footprints are partly concealed with white dots on the right-hand side of this work.
Warangula’s created this first major work, Rain, lightning and stars at night in a style more consistent with works produced in mid to late 1972. Covering secret sacred meaning with dots lead to a dotting technique now inseperable from Aboriginal Art.
The painter overlays and intersecting sinuous lines trace the movement of waterways by the falling rain.
Painted 1971, synthetic polymer paint on chipboard.
Women camped at Kampurrula
Women’s Dreamings are rare in the corpus of paintings by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula. This painting features two women’s camps in luxuriant fields of bush tucker nourished by the rains created by the ancestor beings.
The artist well known for his early paintings of Rain and Water Dreamings of Kalipinypa, Tjikari and Ilpilli. Kampurarrpa (Kampurrula) is a site close to Ilpilli in the Ehrenberg Ranges. The painting shows two camps; the women, symbolised by the double-U forms either side of a set of concentric circles,. Their equipment of digging sticks and oval carrying dishes coolamon are clearly shown. Their footprints, leaving and returning to the camps suggest a series of foraging expeditions. These footprints also mark the choreography of dance ceremony.
The set of concentric circles that run vertically through the composition represent waterholes. The continuous lines that weave around these relate symbolize rain and flowing water. The red lines that meander laterally and diagonally across the picture possibly represent a vine (ngalyipi). This vine is woven by women into ceremonial dress.
Painted synthetic polymer paint on board 58.0 x 43.0 cm
Mala Rufous Hare Wallaby Dreaming
Mala, Rufous Hare Wallaby distinctive inhabitant of the Western Desert. The hare-sized animal sheltered in needle-sharp tussocks of mature spinifex.
Fire was used by the Pintupi to flush Mala from cover, so hunters could dispatch the wallabies as they fled.
Johnny Warangula was intimately associated with the Mala ancestors. He inherited custodianship of the Dreaming from his father and grandfather, who were born at Tjikarri. There are two distinct narratives associated with Tjikarri. The first involves the Nananana men hunting Mala with fire. The second the journey of an old sorcerer who, with the aid of a Mala horde, pursues a giant dingo-like creature, Matinpilangu.
The leftmost track shows a Mala ancestor moving slowly, dragging its tail (straight line) and using its front paws (E-shapes) for support. It lifts its large rear legs in the typical mode of Australian macropods (as indicated by V-shaped footprints). The movement of the Mala ancestor on the right is more distinct. As the animal approaches the concentric circle, it rests one clenched paw on the ground, (to look around?). It then placing both front paws on the earth on the rim of the roundel (as if to drink). The Mala then hops over the circle, resting its front right paw on the ground again (to check the scene?) before continuing. In the ceremonial context, decorated performers re-enact the actions of the Mala ancestors.
Based on the description by John Kean
Early Papunya Artworks and Articles
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