Life in the Central Desert can be punishing. After drought forced Timmy Payungka Tjapangati’s Pintupi family to walk from Gibson Desert to a distant ration station in Haasts Bluff, they ultimately landed at a government settlement at Papunya. There in 1971, he and a group of other Pintupi men doing farmwork picked up a brush from a white man. The transition from bark to canvas was interesting, even exciting to some painters, but the brush was often cast aside as artists preferred their own fingertips. Tjapangati not only embraced the brush, he clung to his roots as he actively led the return of the Pintupi to their traditional country of Kiwirrkura in the mid-1980s. He also served as a protector of nine Pintupi who remained in the desolate Gibson Desert for decades, and connected with family after seeing their hunting fire smoke.Tjapangati’s once figurative work has given way to enigmatic geometrics, specifically the key design that carvers incise on woods for secret ceremonies. His hues are limited to the ceremonial white, black and red undercoat. A leader and a custodian, the painter shares this symbol with authority.