Kuninjku artist Ivan Namirrkki was born in 1961. Namirrkki learned to paint from his father Peter Marralwanga (1917-1987), a famous bark painter. Ivan Namirrkki first learned to paint figuratively from his father. The focus was on stories like Kalawan and Namorrorddo for his Kardbam clan lands near Mankorlod, although later Marralwanga also guided Ivan Namirrkki in the stories of other clans around Kumurrulu. He helped his father work on two exhibitions in Perth in 1981 and 1983 and traveled to Perth as part of the project.

To distinguish his own figurative works, Ivan Namirrkki often used black paint as the background for the figures, although, like his father, he also became adept at varying the fill pattern, from rarrk to dotted lines to dotted lines. color sections to create dynamic visual effects. In the late 1990s, Ivan Namirrkki began painting geometric works in the Mardayin style. Its style is very strongly symmetrical with simultaneously spaced rarrrk bands arranged in concentric diamond shapes. This arrangement of diamonds has become his signature and forms the background to works that show the complex interconnections between his country's waterholes. He also contrasts these patterns with dots and other variations of rarrrk to indicate the power of the sites. Sometimes Namirrkki returns to paint figurative images or combine them into more geometric images.