Sharelle Napangardi Dixon

Sharelle was born in 1991, in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Nyirripi, a remote Aboriginal community 450 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She was born into a well-known artist family. Her mother is Ada Nangala Dixon and her grandparents are Pegleg Jampijinpa (Dec 2006), a successful Pintupi artist and Margaret Napangardi Brown (Dec 2013), a successful artist with Warlukurlangu Artists. Sharelle has grown up most of her life in Nyirripi. First attending the local school, then moving to Alice Springs where she attended secondary schooling at Yirara College, a boarding school for Indigenous students from remote communities. She completed her education at Kormilda College, in Darwin, NT.

Sharelle is a single parent with two boys. Before she joined Warlukurlangu artists she focused on her parenting role, keeping an eye on her boys. However, she likes to be active and employed, and when the boys were older, she began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists.

Sharelle has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu and in Nyirripi, since 2019. She paints her grandmother’s Karnta Jukurrpa (Women’s Dreaming), Yurrampi Julkurrpa (Honey Ant Dreaming and Warlukurlangu Jukurrpa (Fire Dreaming). It was her grandmother, Margaret Napangardi, who taught her to paint her jukurrpa, stories which have been passed down over the generations for millennia and relate directly to the land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. Sharelle uses traditional iconology and an unrestricted palette, developing a modern interpretation of her traditional culture.

When she is not painting, she loves going out bush hunting and cooking Kangaroo tails. She also travels and spends time, in Jilkminggan, a community near Mataranka, a town 420 km south-east of Darwin, famous for its hot springs, and where her boy’s father lives.