With a career spanning more than five decades, Cape Dorset artist Kenojuak Ashevak (1927) was the matriarch of a pioneering generation of Arctic creators.
The Inuit printmaker was a national treasure who died in 2013. Kenouak was born in an igloo on the southern coast of Baffin Island in 1927, and is considered one of Canada’s most influential artists.
The Enchanted Owl, a colour stonecut on laid paper, is one of her most recognized works and one of the most enduring and iconic images in Canadian art ( see the video above and on YouTube here.) It is one of my own favourites and is the logo for Canadian Art Junkie, on the title banner above.
30 Ways to Describe an Owl
Kenojuak’s snowy owls and other Arctic birds are legendary. Scroll through this Inuit Art Foundation list of “30 Ways to Describe an Owl, according to Kenojuak Ashevak“ She rendered the feathers of these birds in elongated and curved lines which radiate outwards with a sense of frenetic energy.
As an early participant in the first Inuit printmaking program, set up by James Houston in Cape Dorset in the late 1950s, Kenoujuak helped define a new aesthetic language with her drawings and prints. Some of her never-before-seen prints in stonecut, lithography and etching are on exhibition through April at Beaverbrook gallery in New Brunswick (here)
In 2004 Kenojuak designed a window for the chapel of Appleby College in Oakville, the first stained glass window ever designed by an Inuit artist (more here) . Titled Iggalaaq (Where the Light Comes Through), the window portrays a large, snowy owl and an arctic char — both symbols of Canada’s north.
Her stylized prints featuring birds, fish, humans, and other animals are perhaps most widely recognized for their presence on postage stamps and currency. But Kenojuak’s intense and imaginative visual language originates in larger-scale drawings, as well as soapstone carvings and textiles.
She is the matriarch of the modern Inuit art movement – exemplifying incredible skill and creativity of the movement based out of Kinngait — formerly Cape Dorset — that Kenojuak helped found.
The nationally touring exhibition of her work through April at the Beaverbrook gallery includes drawings, from the archives of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, which inspired some of Kenojuak’s most emblematic prints. (Above, video of the catalog)
Nearly every Cape Dorset Annual Print Release since 1959 and until her death in 2013, has featured work by Kenojuak. Her images have been exhibited throughout Canada, United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Sweden, South Korea and Japan among other countries. Her work is in numerous public and private collections internationally.
Dorset Fine Arts / Kenojuak Ashevak, here
At the National Gallery of Canada, here.
Travelling exhibition site, here.
Heritage Minute (video) on CBC, here.
This is No. 60 in 150 Artists, an ongoing series on Canadian artists you should know.
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It doesn’t matter how often I see Kenojuak’s prints, they always stop me in my tracks – so vibrant.
Yes, thank you for expressing exactly how powerful they are. Such a legacy.
My gosh, such fantastic work. So bright, cheerful, I can’t stop smiling. The stained glass window is a treasure, everything is. 💕
There’s a famous Kenojuak quote that corresponds to how you just reacted to her work. She says: “I am an owl, a happy owl” and despite her innumerable hardships, that’s how she lived … wise and happy. Thank you for weighing in.