Ada Andy Napaltjarri

Ada Andy Napaltjarri (born ) is a Warlpiri- and Luritja-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. Ada was born near Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, and has lived in several Northern Territory communities. She began painting in the early 1980s at Alice Springs and probably played a role in the development of interest in painting in the communities in which she has lived.

Life alt=Daytime landscape photo, showing a range of hills with the nearest rising to a rocky red peak, below a blue sky with a few white strings of cloud, and above the tops of eucalyptus trees. Ada Andy was born in 1954 at Narwietooma Station, near Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, west of Alice Springs. 'Napaljarri' (in Warlpiri) or 'Napaltjarri' (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Ada Andy' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.

Her mother is artist Entalura Nangala who painted for major Indigenous art company Papunya Tula. And her father is Old Andy (Walpa) Tjungarrayi who is from Karrinyarra Mount wedge station and spoke Warlpiri and Anmeterrye. Her mother Entalura's later traditionally married husband Don Tjungarrayi. Her father however did not marry but did still live with Don and Intalura at Karrinyarra outstation until his death in 2000.

Ada grew up at Haasts Bluff, and then lived at Kintore from around 1955 to around 1964. Their work, which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures, rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia, particularly following the commencement of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983. By the 1980s and 1990s, such work was being exhibited internationally. The first artists, including all of the founders of the Papunya Tula artists' company, had been men, and there was resistance amongst the Pintupi men of central Australia to women painting. However, there was also a desire amongst many of the women to participate, and in the 1990s large numbers of them began to create paintings. In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo, and on the outstations, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale. although Birnberg and Kreczmanski record that she did paint for the company. Ada paints Warumpi Mother and Daughter dreaming, Women Dancing, Yalka (bush onion) dreaming, and stories associated with black plum, wurrampi (honey ant) and Ngapa (water).