Ilpitirri Central Australia

Chairman - Papunya Tula Artists in the 1970's
National Gallery Canberra
National Gallery Victoria
National Museum Canberra
South Australia Museum
Art Gallery South Australia
Art gallery NSW
Victorian Arts Centre
Museum Art Gallery NT
Flinders University Art Museum SA
University WA - Anthropology Museum
Robert Holmes a Court Collection
Richard Kelton Foundation USA
Donald Khan Collection USA
Campbelltown City Council

Born at Ilpitirri near Mt Denison, north-west of Papunya, c. 1927 of the Anmatyerre/Western Arrente tribe. His first contact with whites was as an infant survivor of the Coniston massacre (1928): 'All the people were running. I was a little one – in a coolamon. My mother put me under a bush. My father had gone hunting – for rabbit and goanna.

They killed my mother. I was grown up by her sister – Clifford Possum's mother.' Billy grew up at Napperby station and Aileron, was initiated at Napperby and then worked there as a stockman. Later he worked as a cook in the Papunya communal kitchen and with the Pintupi people brought in from the west, helping them to adjust to the settlement lifestyle. He was one of the Papunya Town Councillors in the '70s and an accomplished wood carver before he took up painting. Billy was one of the founders of the Papunya painting movement, watched over by Old Mick and Old Tom Onion, who gave permission for the use of their stories; Billy, Kaapa and Long Jack Phillipus painted the Honey Ant Dreaming design on the school wall which set the painting movement in motion.

An energetic campaigner in the outstation movement, he was one of the first to shift to his own outstation west of Papunya. His country lies west of Napperby station around Mt Denison, Ilpitirri and Yuendumu. He paints Budgerigar, Spider, Snake and Wild Potato Dreamings for this region. Billy was a Central Australian delegate to the NAC during the '70s; Aboriginal Arts Board member 1975-79, and also Chairman of Papunya Tula Artists during the '70s. Billy has visited the USA several times, for the opening of the 'Dreamings: Art of Aboriginal Australia' major exhibition in New York in 1988. Also has visited Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the 'All Black Festival' in South Africa. He painted in Alice Springs for the ‘Original Dreamtime Gallery between 1988 and 1995’ but mostly lives between Alice Springs and with his family on his outstation at Ilili near Papunya. He and his wife (deceased) had two sons and two daughters, of whom Jillian Stockman painted extensively as the in house artist at the 'Original Dreamtime Art Gallery' Alice Springs his other daughter Panata also paints they were both taught by their father.

Painted Country's Gallery Director has been closely associated with the Stockman family for over 20 years.