Deutscher and Hackett

Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri was born at Pirupa Akla around 1920 and his language group was Pitjantjatjara. As a young man he traveled across country to work as a cook at Haasts Bluff Mission where he met his wife Colleen Nampitjinpa. Later, he moved with his family to the Amanturrungu Outstation near Mount Liebig in the Central Desert. Whiskey was also known as a respected healer (Ngnagkari).

In 2004 he began to paint utilising the studio facilities of the local Watiyawanu Artist collective where significant inspirational women artists such as Wentja Morgan Napaltjarri were already working. Skillfully represented by Watiyawanu Artists, his work was included in six group exhibitions in 2006 and his first solo exhibition was held in Coffs Harbour the following year.

This large and bold work is distinguished by its relatively early date in Whiskey's short painting career between 2004 and 2008. With its intense, even pungent colours, dramatic tonal shifts and vibrantly-rendered textures, it contains all the key iconic elements of the later, often large-scale paintings – always with the same name – that would follow in the next two years. Notice, for example, how carefully orchestrated superimposed layers of colour dotting, often strongly contrasting, simultaneously constrain and open swathes of the painting's surface. The optical effect is to release and dissolve any fixity of form. Energetically and playfully manipulating pictorial kineticism in this way, Whiskey manifests the inherent vitality of country.

Belonging to Whiskey’s earliest exhibition period, this painting is typical of his subject matter and depicts the rock holes near Pirupa Akla, country located near the Olgas to the west of Uluru. The white areas represent the shimmering quartz country associated with his white cockatoo, crow and eagle ancestral story which involves an epic creation battle between the birds. The rock holes were formed where the battling birds tumbled and crashed to the ground and the shards of white stone depicted here represent the cockatoo's feathers