Hilda Nakamarra Rogers was born in Papunya, an Aboriginal community located 240 km northwest of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She attended her local school in Papunya before going to Yirara College in Alice Springs. After college she returned to Papunya and worked at the school teaching language. Hilda married a man from Yuendumu in 1987 and moved to Yuendumu, a neighbouring community to Papunya where many of the same families live. Later she moved to Nyirripi, a remote Aboriginal community approximately 160km west of Yuendumu where she still lives.
She is married to Desmond Williams and they have two sons, Micah and Eliezer. She also has a granddaughter who Hilda enjoys looking after. Both her parents are deceased and were artists at Papunya. As a child she watched her parents paint and listened to their stories.
Hilda started painting in 1988 and since 2003 has begun painting consistently with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation. Hilda paints Bush tucker stories, in particular Ngurlu Jukurrpa (Native Seed Dreaming). Occasionally she paints her husband’s dreaming, Yurrumpi Jukurrpa (Honey Ant Dreaming) and her father’s dreaming, Ngapa Jukurrpa (Water Dreaming), Dreamings which have been passed down through the generations for millennia.
She likes sport and sometimes goes hunting for goanna and kangaroo and looking for bush tucker. She also enjoys visiting her husband’s family who live in Yuendumu.
The Jukurrpa (dreaming) that Hilda often depicts, belongs to the women of the Nakamarra/Napurrurla subsections and to Jakamarra and Jupurrurla men. The Dreaming is associated with a place called Jaralypari, north of Yuendumu. Lukarrara (desert fringe rush) is a grass with an edible seed. The seeds are traditionally ground on a large stone with a smaller stone to make flour. This flour is mixed with water to make damper cakes which are cooked and eaten. In Warlpiri traditional paintings iconography is used to represent the Dreaming, particularly sites and other elements. Large concentric circles often represent the site of Jaralypiri and also the seed bearing grass Lukurrara. U-shapes depict the women collecting the grasses, and straight lines are frequently used to portray seeds that fall down to the ground and are also collected by women using their wooden food carriers and digging sticks.
