Minnie Pwerle was born near Utopia, north-east of Alice Springs; sources place her birth anywhere between about 1910 and 1922. An Alyawarr woman, her Country was Atnwengerrp, and she lived there most of her life.

Her husband was the artist ‘Motorcar’ Jim Ngala, and she had seven children. Her eldest, Barbara Weir, whose father was the Irish stockman Jack Weir, was taken from the family as a child and only reunited with Minnie years later. Barbara went on to manage her mother’s painting career. Her daughter Betty Club Mpetyane and granddaughter Charmaine Pwerle also paint her stories, as did her sisters Emily, Galya and Molly Pwerle.

Minnie began painting on canvas in late 1999 or 2000, at around 80 years of age. Asked why she had waited so long, she reportedly said that no one had asked her. Her first solo exhibition, at Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne in 2000, launched a remarkable six-year career.

Her paintings are bold, fluid and joyful: loose, sweeping lines in brilliant colour, drawn from the Awelye body designs painted on women for ceremony. She painted Awelye for Atnwengerrp, Anemangkerr (bush melon) and Akarley (northern wild orange), often with roundels for the melons and their seeds.

Demand for her work grew so quickly that by 2004 Australian Art Collector named her one of Australia’s 50 most collectable artists. Her success also drew controversy, with reports of people pressuring her to paint for them and of works falsely sold under her name.