Patrick McMillan Tjupurrula (Aranda Aboriginal, b. 1937) "Bush Banana Dreaming"

Provenance Note: Frederic P. "Nick" Norton (1935-2025) was a respected Western New York attorney, civic leader, and devoted arts patron whose lifelong commitment to culture enriched the Buffalo region. A Dartmouth College graduate (Class of 1957) and Yale Law School alumnus, Norton practiced law locally for five decades at Norton, Radin, Hoover, Freedman, serving corporations, municipalities, and families. He was deeply engaged in civic and cultural life, holding leadership and board roles with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, among others. Since 1961, Norton served Rotary in numerous leadership roles including president, board member, and district governor, and is a Paul Harris Fellow with four sapphires, a benefactor, and a recipient of the Rotary Foundation’s Citation for Meritorious Service.
A dedicated arts patron inspired by his father, he began collecting in 1956 with his passions supported and complimented by his wife, Alexandra Barnes "Alex" Norton, through the years. A passionate and disciplined collector for more than fifty years, Norton assembled an extensive collection of prints, drawings, paintings, and sculpture. His connoisseurship was guided by intellectual curiosity and a commitment to supporting artists and institutions. Between 1998 and 2000, he gifted more than 500 prints to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, underscoring his belief in public access to art. They dedicated the F. Paul Norton and Frederic P. Norton Family Prints and Drawings Study Center in 1999. Works remaining from the Norton estate reflect decades of informed acquisition and cultural stewardship, offering collectors a view into a thoughtful engagement with modern and contemporary art.

Patrick McMillan Tjupurrula (Aranda Aboriginal, b. 1937)
Patrick McMillan Tjupurrula is an Aboriginal Australian painter associated with the Western Desert art movement. A Pintupi man, he was born near Kiwirrkurra in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia and later moved to Papunya during the government resettlement period of the 1960s.
Tjupurrula began painting in the early 1970s, shortly after the emergence of the Papunya Tula movement, which was catalyzed in 1971 with the encouragement of schoolteacher Geoffrey Bardon. Like many Pintupi artists, he translated traditional Dreaming (Tjukurrpa) stories - particularly those connected to ancestral travels and sacred sites in the Western Desert - into acrylic paintings on board and canvas.
His work is characterized by bold geometric patterning, rhythmic dotting, and symbolic iconography that encodes ceremonial narratives and topographical elements such as waterholes, rock holes, and ancestral pathways. As a Tjupurrula (skin name), he belongs to a major Pintupi kinship group, and his paintings often relate to sites connected with his custodial responsibilities.
Patrick McMillan Tjupurrula has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, and his works are held in significant public and private collections. He is considered part of the first generation of Western Desert painters who helped establish contemporary Aboriginal art as a major force in global contemporary art.