Ray James Tjangala (Pintupi, born 1958) is considered to be among the most significant artists to represent the new generation of artistic talent from Papunya Tula, the birthplace of the contemporary indigenous art movement. Ray is the son of Anatjari Tjampitjinpa (1927-1999), who was one of the founders of the Papunya Artists Collective. Under his father’s instructions and tutelage, Ray had established by the middle of the 1990s an artistic reputation which recognised him as one of the most important exponents of the second generation Kiwirrkurra artists. The artist’s paintings have been profiled in numerous exhibitions throughout Australia in Adelaide, Alice Springs (with Papunya Tula Collective), Brisbane (with Fireworks Galleries), Canberra, Darwin, Melbourne (notably with Gabrielle Pizzi and Scott Livesey galleries), Sydney (with Utopia) and Perth; as well as abroad, notably in Singapore, London, and New York. His paintings were also included in landmark survey exhibitions of indigenous art in Australia (AGNSW, NGV, MAGNT) and abroad (Spain, Italy, Denmark, Germany, and the United States). Ray James was a finalist in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award, and his paintings reside in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, selected regional and tertiary collections across Australia, as well as notable corporate and private collections in the United States, Denmark, Germany, Spain, and other countries across the world.

The artist's paintings narrate stories from the Tingari Tjukurrpa cycle, a Dreaming sacred to Ray’s Pintupi kinsmen. The Dreaming narrates the journey of the Tingari elders, who travelled across the breadth and width of (what is known today as) the Western Desert, defeating evil spirits and establishing sacred sites. When encountering local communities, they performed initiation ceremonies which taught the communities about the laws and rituals of the land, about the topography and inhabitants of the surrounding regions, as well as teaching them such practical skills as gathering and locating sources of food and water. The Tingari Tjukurrpa is considered to be among the vastest (known) Dreaming cycles, sacred to a number of indigenous communities. The initiated artists from different groups and regions depict either a particular aspect of the Tingari elders’ journey, or a particular ceremony associated with the Dreaming.

Ray James’s paintings in oscillating lines of geometric designs in limited, near-monochrome palette are among the most popular within the artist's oeuvre. They narrate the ceremonial rituals relating to the sojourn of the Tingari elders at the soakage water site of Yunala, west of Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia. The colours and shapes of the markings refer cumulatively to the rituals associated with the ceremonies, the topographical features of the area, especially the sinuous sand dunes, as well as the intricate networks of the bush banana roots and other edible plans, which is found naturally in abundance in the region. Though painted with acrylics, the choice of pigments references the local colours of the Yunala region as well as the origins of indigenous art in the sourcing of naturally found ochres for ceremonial decorations of bodies and sacred objects.