Polly Ngale was born around 1936 in the Utopia region, about 240 km north-east of Alice Springs. An Anmatyerre woman, she was a senior custodian of her Country, Arlparra.

She was one of three celebrated sisters, with Kathleen Ngale and Angelina Pwerle, who all held the Bush Plum Dreaming. Polly and Kathleen often painted side by side. Her husband was Alec Ngwarai, and her daughters Bessie Petyarre and Josie Kunoth Petyarre are artists too. Polly passed away in August 2022.

Like many Utopia women, Polly began with batik in the late 1970s, and her silks were included in Utopia – A Picture Story, the Holmes à Court collection of 88 batiks. She moved to canvas with the first Utopia women’s paintings of 1988–89.

Her great subject was Anwekety, the spiny conkerberry shrub whose fruit she called bush plum. She built up layer upon layer of colour and dots to create shimmering, multi-dimensional images, drawing on her knowledge of Country, her own history and the journeys of the Ancestors.