Mitjili Napurrula was born around 1945 in the Haasts Bluff region, west of Alice Springs. Her parents were Tupa Tjakamarra and the artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri, and her half-brother was the well-known Pintupi painter Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, a founding member of Papunya Tula Artists.

She married the artist Long Tom Tjapanangka, and in the late 1980s the couple moved from Papunya back to Haasts Bluff as part of the outstation movement. Mitjili passed away in April 2019.

Mitjili and Long Tom began painting in 1992, when the Ikuntji Women’s Centre opened at Haasts Bluff. Her early paintings were close to the Papunya style she had seen as a young woman, but she soon found a voice of her own, becoming one of the brightest stars of the Haasts Bluff art movement.

She painted her father’s Country, Uwalki, in the Gibson Desert near the Kintore Ranges: red sandhills, bushes and trees, especially the beautiful desert oaks. Her best-known subject, Watiya Tjuta (the trees), comes from her father’s Dreaming; her mother taught her the story by drawing it in the sand. Her paintings are known for tight patterning and bold colour.