Walala Tjapaltjarri is a Pintupi man who was born in the early 1960s at Marua, east of Kiwirrkurra in the Gibson Desert. He is married to a Warlpiri woman and travels between his homeland of Kiwirrkura and his wife's country of Yuendumu and Alice Springs. In late 1984, Walala and eight other relatives of the Pintupi Tribe walked out of the desert in Western Australia and made contact for the first time with European society. Described as 'The Lost Tribe', he and his family created international headlines. Until this time Walala and his family lived the traditional and nomadic life of a hunter-gatherer society. His style is strongly gestural and boldly graphic, one that is generally highlighted by a series of rectangles set against a monochrome background. He paints the Tingari Cycle a series of sacred and secret mythological song cycles which are associated with the artist's many dreaming sites.