Kenojuak Ashevak

Over the course of an artistic career that lasted more than 50 years, Kenojuak Ashevak produced some of the most recognizable works in Canadian art. Full of invention and fantastical imagination, Ashevak’s colourful drawings and prints encompass representations of animals with fanciful appendages and birds with swelling and glowing plumage. She is especially famed for her emblematic depictions of owls. Mythic in intent, her images are often characterized by centred compositions, radial symmetry and rhythmic use of line. Her early works from the 1960s typically consist of single images or silhouettes isolated on a white ground, the imagery energized by a dynamic use of negative space. Always an innovator, in 2005 Ashevak began working in the new medium of sugar lift etching, producing a series of large format works that offer a contemporary reinterpretation of her classic graphic style.

Ashevak was born in 1927 at Ikirasak, one of several small camps that once dotted the southern coastline of Baffin Island. Beginning at the age of six, she lived with her grandmother for several years, learning skin sewing skills and methods for collecting animal and plant resources. Following her move to Cape Dorset in the late 1950s, Ashevak was approached by James Houston to make drawings for the new graphics studio in Cape Dorset. She quickly emerged as one of Dorset’s strongest artistic voices and its leading personality. Often described as a Canadian cultural icon, she became the first Inuit artist to receive the Governor General’s Award for Achievement in the Visual Arts in 2008. Kenojuak Ashevak died in 2013.