Lily Sandover Kngwarreye was born c 1937 at MacDonald Downs on the Utopia clan lands. She began painting during the 1988-9 CAAMA summer workshop following almost a decade making batik. The adopted ‘sister’ of Emily Kngwarreye, Lily was her closest friend and constant companion, often referring to Emily when in a humorous mood as ‘granny’. Lily was the eldest daughter of senior Alyawarr elder Jacob Jones and she in turn became the senior woman for the site of Entibera. She painted the important Two Sisters stories and a range of stories about bush foods including Honey Grevillia.

When painting, Emily Kngwarreye and Lily Sandover were inseparable companions. Lily looked after the older Emily closely, while painting her own works alongside. Lily painted hundreds of paintings over the years as she worked beside her friend and, right up until the last months of her life; Emily camped with Lily and their family on Delmore Downs. Her tribal country lies close to the homestead at Delmore Downs owned by the Holt family for whom Emily Kngwarreye painted more than 1500 paintings between 1989 and her death in 1996. Together Emily and Lily would travel and live for long periods on Delmore surrounded by an extended family that at times could grow to 40 women and children.

When an ‘official’ art centre, Urapuntja Artists, was established at Utopia, Lily became a founding member and during this time she collaborated with Northern Editions to produce a number of etchings including 'Alhwert I' and 'Alhwert II’, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. The alhwert (pronounced 'allota') was a small burrowing bettong, or kangaroo rat, that is now extinct. The prints depict ‘iepa grass’, the traditional food source and home of the alhwert. The centre from which the patterns radiate is where the alhwert made its home. This became Lily Sandover’s defining image and the subject of the vast majority of her paintings

While best known for works in contrasting black and white, she would occasionally apply other colours such as red acrylic on a yellow ochre ground. In time Lily, like her father, became a senior spokesperson for the Alyawarr people. She exhibited at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in 1989 and at the Hogarth and Coo-ee Galleries in Sydney during 1991 but failed to gain the recognition that many felt she deserved due to her restricted subject matter and the fact that she spent so much time in her more famous countrywoman’s shadow.

While Lily Sandover had only one solo exhibition in 1991 in Melbourne, her work was included in a number of important group shows during her lifetime. They included exhibitions with Stephane Jacob's Arts d'Australie in Paris, Flash Pictures at the National Gallery of Australia, and works from the Holmes a Court Collection which toured Scotland and a number of USA venues including Harvard University, University of Minnesota, and Lake Oswego Center for the Arts.

She is represented in the collections of the Netherlands Aboriginal Art Museum in Utrecht, The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, The Holmes a Court Collection, Perth, and a number of important private collections in Australia and overseas.