[4] His family were Pintupi hunter-gatherers who lived a traditional nomadic way of life on the western side of the lake, and had never come into contact with Euro-Australian society.
He served as the family's main provider of food,[7] hunting with spears, mirru (spear-throwers) and boomerangs.
The stories focus around the Tingari, the ancestors of the Pintupi, spirit beings who are believed to have created all living things.
He does so using a series of thousands of delicate concentric lines that appear to overlap each other and eventually converge to create a sense of movement and depth.
[9] Tjapaltjarri's primary work uses colours typical of the natural ochres found in his homeland; white, dark red, grey, and occasionally black.
[4] He also has work in galleries overseas, such as the Quai Branly Museum in Paris, and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia.
"Armstrong's project recreates this ‘dense and mesmerising’ quality in sound, and finds an ingenious correspondence for Tjapaltjarri's great sense of focus and local detail.