[3] She lived in the communities of Haasts Bluff, Papunya, and later at Kintore, about 50 kilometres (31 mi) north-east of the Lake MacDonald region where she was born, on the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Working in synthetic polymer on linen or canvas, Makinti's paintings primarily take as their subjects a rockhole site, Lupul, and an indigenous story (or "dreaming") about two sisters, known as Kungka Kutjarra.

Artists of the Papunya Tula movement were painting at Haasts Bluff in the late 1970s, but the deaths of some of the main painters in the early 1980s led to a period of decline.

[7][11] It was through this initiative that Kumentje began painting in 1994 for the Minyma Tjukurrpa (Kintore/Haasts Bluff Project)[23] and by 1997 her work was being acquired by major collecting institutions.

[16][26][27] The only break in her career was in 1999, when she underwent a cataract operation,[8][d] an event that journalist Nicolas Rothwell suggested was associated with a distinct shift in her work, including the increasing use of thick lines.

[20] Johnson said the operation resulted in "a collection of light-flooded canvases";[8] Art Gallery of New South Wales curator Hetti Perkins said that, after her recovery, "her work showed renewed vigour".

[28] Makinti's works were selected to hang in five consecutive National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) exhibitions, beginning in 1997.

[26] In October 2008, she was one of several prominent artists whose works featured in a charity auction securing funds for the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin.

[16] Her style evolved over time,[20] beginning with gestural brush strokes in ordered compositions, and developing into more closely interwoven representations of the hair-string skirts and designs reflecting those used in body painting.

Judith Ryan, senior curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, described Makinti's entry in the 2003 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award as:concerned with touching and sensing with fingers, rather than purely visual.

The repetition of colour chords and textured striations, which closely echo each other, has a rhapsodic effect akin to many bodies in dance and reveals the inner or spiritual power, the essence, of Makinti Napanangka's country and cultural identity.

[48] The work of the "Kintore ladies" has created "some of the most richly textured surfaces in the history of the (Papunya Tula) company";[8] Makinti's painting for Genesis and Genius was hailed as "a painterly celebration of colour and form".