Pitseolak (1904- 1983 or 1907-1983)
"I draw the things I have never seen, the monsters and spirits, and I draw the old ways, the things we did long ago before there were many white men." -- Pitseolak.
Pitseolak Ashoona was born in either 1904 or 1907 on Nottingham Island, in Hudson Strait, in the eastern Arctic. Her father died before she had reached her teens and she married a hunter named Ashoona soon after. Pitseolak gave birth to seventeen children but only five lived to adulthood. Pitseolak lived a semi-nomadic life until the 1950s, when she moved into village of Cape Dorset. Echoes of her early traditional life can be seen in her drawings and prints.
Contact with white culture exposed the Inuit to many diseases to which they did not have immunity. Epidemics of turberculosis whooping cough, influenza, scarlet fever, measles swept through the north killing many. In one such epidemic in the late 1940s, Pitseolak lost her husband leaving her to raise and care for their children. Around this time, the Canadian government was encouraging people to live in permanent settlements on the coast and the once self-sufficient people found their nomadic life becoming more and more impossible.
In the 1950s, Jim Houston— called Saumik, meaning "Left Handed One," by the Inuit— was the Northern Affairs administrator for the Cape Dorset area. During this time, Houston founded the first Inuit owned art co-operative. This co-op provided the residents in Cape Dorset a place to produce and market their art and profits were shared between the members. This co-op greatly altered Pitseolak’s life.
Pitseolak first began working for the co-op making garments such as parkas. However, the work was hard and did not pay terribly well. Houston had exposed the Cape Dorset residents to graphic art and paper and many, like Pitseolak, began producing images on paper. Houston saw talent in her images and began purchasing her work and encouraging her to produce more.
Her works have a distinctive style: they are frequently lively, lighthearted, often possess humour and joy and have strong a strong sense of design, balance, colour and energy. Her subject matter often captures memories of "the old ways" and also conveys supernatural creatures from traditional stories and legends.
In her artistic career of twenty years she produced over seven thousand drawings and 250 prints. She worked to master a range of media including coloured pencil, felt tip pen and copper plate engraving. Pitseolak would eventually become the most famous of the Cape Dorset Artists.
Pitseolak had a strong commercial success but also attracted recognition such as membership in the Royal Canadian Academy (1974) and being awarded the hightest civilian award, the Order of Canada (1977)
Pitseolak’s life and career spanned a wide and quickly changing period in Canadian history. As she noted, "I know I have had an unusual life, being born in a skin tent and living to hear on the radio that two
men have lived on the moon."
For More information on Pitseolak, see
Joe Talirunili 1893-1976
Joe Talirunili was born in 1893 in Niaqunna, near the mouth of the Kogaluc River. The Kogaluc flows into the Hudson Bay and during his lifetime Talirunili lived in numerous communities along the coastline of the Hudson Bay. His life experiences in these communites informed his work and recur in his images.
Talirunili began painting, drawing and sculpting in the early 1960s and was one of the first members of the Povungnituk community to become actively involved in printmaking. Rather than making preliminary drawings, Talirunili carved his images directly onto the stoneblock. This technique grants his work an immediacy as well as a particular directness. While his work has a lively imagery, the individual elements possess a minimal amount of detail. His work captures the stories of everyday life in the North. Talirunili is said to have used "whatever material was at hand" and was not "overly fussy about details."
In his lifetime, he created over seventy prints in his lifetime; the first annual print collection from Povungnituk in 1962 included eight of his works.
Judas Ullulaq (b. 1937 )
Born in Thom Bay in 1937, Judas Ullulaq now lives in Gjoa Haven. He began sculpting by making small figures of dogteams and models of igloos when his children were small. After a hiatus, he resumed sculpting in the late 1960s and 1970s. Ullulaq first exhibited his work in 1977 and since then he has become one of the major sculptors in the Kitikmeot region. Ullulaq is part of an artisitic family, including brothers Nelson Takkiruq and Charlie Ugyuk, and his nephew, Karoo Ashevak
Ullulaq’s subjects tend to be part of everyday life and reflect his hunting experiences. While he has a distinct style, Ullulaq’s work is also representative of the Kitikmeot region’s contemporary sculpture. His style can be described as exagerated, detailed, expressive and stylized.
Gilbert Hay 1951-
Born in North-West-River in 1951 and raised in Nain, Labrador's northernmost Inuit community, Gilbert Hay is one of the most prominent Inuit carvers. He began carving because, at the age of 22, he realized there were no other jobs for him.
Hay travelled extensively and these experiences were formative in his artistic career. As he notes, "I left Labrador to go around North America. Then I went home and found my culture. That experience enriched my art and brought me to a conclusion of a sort. Not every young Inuk can go outside and experience the world and learn to appreciate their culture and express it in their art. . . . I feel I'm practising my culture when I do my art."
When he returned to Nain in the mid 1970s, he began carving soapstone, ivory, whale bone, antler and labradorite. During his career, he has experimented with a range of materials from soft soapstone to marbles found all over Newfoundland and Labrador. As he says of carving, "I like working with stone -- more than with paint. When I'm working with stone, I can predict what is going to come out. It's there, all you have to do is pull it away. I only carve what I feel -- it's part of my whole life-system, part of the land. I must have time to hang around, to go hunting. Hunting enriches my carving."
In March 1991, he received a scholarship to attend a five week session at the Banff Centre for the Arts on neo-mythology. This experience helped to develop Hay’s thinking about art and the artisitic processes.
In addition to his artistic vision, Hay's work is deeply connected with the political and cultural realities of Inuit life. As he says about his work and its political connections, "You can say my work is political. Politics is something you can't turn off. We are fighting to exist. Our people will have the opportunity to speak out and for the first time in the history of Labrador Inuit and Innu, we will speak together."
Additionally, he states,
"Right now, what I feel about my artwork is that it reflects what my culture, my small society, is going through. Land claim negotiations are shaking the foundation of our society. You ask why Inuit artists are producing "memory art" rather than social commentary. It's because of fear. Look at us today. For the last 150 or 200 years our culture has been sabotaged by you guys, your values. I'm wearing your clothing. Any culture tries to hold onto to what it's losing. We were and still are trying to document our own history. Many times our works are about our legends and events such as mass starvations. The only way that we are able to hold onto many of our cultural values is by reducing art to forms related to and centred around that culture"