Biography is a very personal thing. The setting of parameters for a biographical study is challenging, sometimes daunting and irritating, and unavoidable. First, choose a worthy subject - you will be together for some time. My biographical subject, Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, was a Pintupi man (culture and gender) from the Western Desert (geography and history), c1923-1998 (time), and award-winning Papunya Tula artist (market and career). I never met him, which represents both constraint and opportunity. His life story was significantly different to mine; he experienced colonisation, I did not. Taking curiosity as a starting point I combined art analysis and social history enquiry with visits to Western Desert communities and sites to better appreciate what he said (in rare interviews) about places and how he represented them, and the Tjukurrpa (Dreaming), in his paintings. The research and writing processes included many stumbles and assumptions along the way. Then the preparation of a book for publication nearly exhausted me, for I had thought ‘turning a thesis into a book’ would be relatively straightforward. And so, to what end? To bring varying perspectives into public view regarding Aboriginal people from remote communities who we Australians generally never meet.