B. 1935-2017

Nora Wompi was a Manyjilyjarra and Kukatja artist born at Lipuru along the Canning Stock Route in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. A painter of deep knowledge and gentle charisma, Wompi was renowned for her depictions of Country around Kunawarritji, a site associated with the Minyipuru Jukurrpa (Seven Sisters Dreaming).

In her early twenties, Wompi left her desert homeland during a time of severe drought, travelling north along the Canning Stock Route, eventually settling at Balgo Mission, where she learned to paint in the late 1980s alongside her close friend and mentor Eubena Nampitjin. Later in life, after the death of her husband, she returned to Kunawarritji to rejoin her close relatives.

Wompi’s works are characterised by their expressive movement, often painted "wet on wet" in layers of vibrant colour. Her paintings evoke both memory and place, offering an ethereal glimpse into an ancestral world. As one writer observed, her compositions “seem at once to conjure up the essence of a mythic world.”

Exhibited widely across Australia and internationally, Wompi was a finalist in the 2013 Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards and featured in the landmark Yiwarra Kuju exhibition at the National Museum of Australia. Her work is held in major public collections including the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Affectionately known as ‘Wompi’, her work remains celebrated for her lyrical visual storytelling and depictions of Kunawarritji.