Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri

Feb 11, 2026

The Anmatyerre stockman and woodcarver from Napperby Station who became the most collected Aboriginal artist of his generation

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Ceremonial Dancing Men, 1990

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (c.1932-2002), Ceremonial Dancing Men, 1990

In February 1972, a woodcarver and stockman living at the Papunya settlement joined a group of Anmatyerre and Luritja men who had been painting their ancestral stories onto masonite boards under the encouragement of a young schoolteacher named Geoffrey Bardon. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri had been born around 1932 at Tjuirri, near Napperby Station, 200 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs, the son of Tjatjiti Tjungurrayi and Long Rose Nangala. He had grown up in the bush, worked as a stockman across stations throughout Central Australia, acquired several languages, and built a reputation as an expert woodcarver of snakes and goannas. He was not among the very first men to take up the brush at Papunya, but once he did, he became the most significant artist the movement produced.

His stepfather was Gwoya Jungarai, known as One Pound Jimmy, whose image appeared on an Australian postage stamp. His brother Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, whose work also appeared on a stamp, was a founding member of the Papunya group and encouraged Clifford to join. Their father had been taken prisoner during the Coniston massacre of 1928, in which police shot and killed nearly 100 Aboriginal people near the area where Clifford would later be born. The history of the land his paintings depict is also a history of dispossession and violence, and his paintings of it are, among other things, acts of assertion.

Papunya Tula Artists Ltd. was formed in 1972 and Clifford Possum served as its chairman through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Between 1976 and 1979 he created a series of large map paintings in which the Dreaming trails of his ancestral country are rendered as something close to deeds of title. Warlugulong (1976), painted with Tim Leura's assistance and depicting the Bushfire Dreaming story connected to his mother's birthplace, was described by Clifford Possum as his "number one painting." For the first time, many different ancestral stories were layered onto a single large canvas, each mapped over the others. It exceeded anything previously produced by the Papunya Tula artists in size and narrative complexity. The work was later purchased by the Commonwealth Bank for $1,200. In 2007, Sotheby's sold it for A$2.4 million to the National Gallery of Australia.

His international career gathered momentum in the late 1980s. London's Institute of Contemporary Arts presented an exhibition of his paintings in 1988. A second solo exhibition in London in 1990, titled Clifford Possum and the Papunya Tula Artists, brought him critical acclaim in Europe and North America. That same year he had a private audience with Queen Elizabeth II. By the 1990s his work was being acquired by major institutions across Australia and internationally, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Royal Collection, and the Kelton Foundation in the United States. His daughter Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi has become a celebrated painter in her own right.

Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri died in Alice Springs on 21 June 2002, aged around 70, on the day he was scheduled to be invested with the Order of Australia. The honour was conferred posthumously. In 2004 the National Gallery of Victoria presented a retrospective of his work, making him the first Papunya Tula artist to receive a major retrospective at an Australian art museum. A further retrospective at the Art Gallery of South Australia toured state galleries. His biographer Vivien Johnson wrote two books on his life and work. His paintings are held in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Royal Collection, and major collections internationally.

25 Famous Aboriginal Artists You Should Know