Kenisha Nangala Brown

Kenisha Nangala Brown was born in 2008 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Nyirripi, a remote Aboriginal community 440 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She is the daughter of Kelly Napangardi Michaels and Robin Jampijinpa Brown, and granddaughter of Alice Nampijinpa Michaels all family members of a long line of artists. Kenisha Nangala Brown first painted at the art centre in Nyirripi as part of a school assignment to learn about her family history and the dreaming stories passed down by her parents and grandparents.  She has two sisters and one brother.

She has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu and Nyirripi, since 2021. She paints her mother’s, her grandmother’s and her great grandmother’s Lappi Lappi Jukurrpa, (Lappi Lappi Dreaming), country near Lake Hazlett, northwest of Lake Mackay in Western Australia. These stories relate directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. They have been passed down through the generations for millennia. Kenisha loved to sit next to her great grandmother looking and listening to her as she painted. Kenisha takes her painting serious, using an unrestricted palette and blends her own patterns with ancestral motifs to depict her traditional Jukurrpa.

When Kenisha is not at school or not painting, she enjoys going to the disco, watching and playing sports such as footy, cricket, basketball and softball, and playing with her friend.