Reviewed by Kevin Griffin
Through to 2012, the Marion Scott Gallert is holding a solo exhibition of the drawings of Kananginak Pootooogook, one of the leading Inuit artists of the past 50 years.
Born in Cape Dorset, Pootoogook spent much of his childhood in a small hunting camp on the south coast of Baffin Island. Raised as a hunter and trapper, he lived in a world where Inuktitut was his first language. His life changed when his father’s poor health meant a return to the growing settlement in Cape Dorset.
Within a short time, he met James Houston, the man who played an instrumental role in developing the existing carving skills of the Inuit and packaging them in the early 1950s for the market economy. In 1957, Pootoogook and a handful of other young artists were the first ones hired in Houston’s new artmaking venture to turn drawings by older artists into limited-edition stonecut prints.
During the Winter Olympics, Marion Scott Gallery brought Pootoogook to Vancouver for a solo exhibition. He continued drawing after returning to the north but by the spring of that year, he was in hospital in Ottawa. He died in November 2010.
