Betty Muffler and Maringka Burton are a dynamic duo. Aunty and niece, they are also two prolific and respected senior Pitjantjatjara artists. Most importantly, they are both ngangkaris (traditional healers) who have spent their lives traversing Country, working together and separately, in their quest to support Anangu to better health. Their ngangkari and painting practices are intertwined and are equally informed by the other: at the heart of both are aspects of healing and care, knowledge and respect. Together, Muffler and Burton work to explore the unseen connections between Anangu and Country.

Muffler and Burton live and work in the small Anangu community of Indulkana, more than four hours south of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). There they work at Iwantja Arts, an Anangu-owned and operated art centre. Muffler has been painting for more than ten years, but most prolifically since 2015. In 2017 she won the Emerging Artist Prize at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. For Burton, her career has followed a similar trajectory, with 2013–14 cementing her as an artist on the rise.

While the two artists have known each other their whole lives, the past year was the first time the duo came together to paint as one. Their largest-ever paintings made to date, Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country) (2020) alert us to Muffler and Burton’s unique and personal experiences of Country. They also serve to document the Tjukurpa and energies that they have inherited from Anangu and the land. Both paintings can be read as an expression of their tireless joy and hope for the future.

Using a large brush to generate big, flowing lines that conjure imagery of roads and waterholes, Burton paints her Country, Anamara Piti, the site of the Caterpillar Tjukurpa, near Irrunytju (Wingellina). While Burton has never shied away from colour, Muffler prefers to paint aerial views of her Country, south of Watarru, almost exclusively in colour-kutju (one colour). Muffler employs small fine brushes for painting, pushing tones of white across the canvas to create a scratchy, topographical vision of home.

In both paintings, Muffler and Burton include reference to their ngangkari, along with reflections on how, together, they bring spirits back to good health. Muffler includes literal imagery of their open healing hands within the paintings – although they are well-hidden and usually hard to find. The duo have also adorned the two works with running lines that identify the movement of water in the desert, as ngangkaris are said to control the weather systems, to bring rain.

The repetition of the linework and the precision in the mark making is haunting. It is not hard to see the spirits of previous ngangkari appear in each of Muffler and Burton’s marks, with both ladies drawing on the memories of their Ancestors to heal that which is missing. As with their healing practice, these paintings are a gift that tether the past with the present. Muffler and Burton generously show that while they have seen many changes to Country and culture due to colonial-brought destruction, they will continue to work together to heal, for the rest of their lives.