Born in 1953 on MacDonald Downs into the Alyawarr tribe, Sandy Pitjara Hunter lived in the Utopia region with his extended family all his life until his death this year in July 2025. He has often been greatly admired for his fine and precise dotwork and masterful use of colour. His Dreaming is Caterpillar (Atlerlayt) which was passed down to him from his father and his paintings depict an aerial view of his country as created by the Caterpillar Ancestor. He maintained the classical men’s tradition of meticulously laid out geometric lines and circles representing the tracks and marks of the Ancestral journeys.His distinctive work consists of hundreds of thousands of carefully executed minute dots in a broad harmony of colour.
Sandy was also a fine sculptor and carves animals such as echidna, birds, iguanas from the wood of the native Bean Tree.
These beautifully detailed works which stand on their own black pedestals have been hand-carved from the wood of the local native Bean Tree (erythrina vespertilio). Sandy Pitjara Hunter worked from a large section of the tree-trunk and used various chisels to shape it. He then applied feathery strokes to the head and dotting to the torso in various shades of polymer acrylic paint.
Collections
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra The Holmes a Court Collection, Perth
Exhibitions
2007 - Patterns of Power- Art from the Eastern Desert, Simmer on the Bay, Sydney
