Six Star Magazine Six Star Magazine Spring 2018 | Page 24

C U LT U R E
Kenojuak Ashevak
Curious Intruder, 2009
Etching and Aquatint
50.5 x 50 cm
The world was first introduced to Kenojuak through
the 1963 National Film Board production, Eskimo Artist:
Kenojuak. Nominated for an Academy Award®, this remarkable
documentary captured the early, promise-filled days of the
arts Co-operative, and the rich life and enchanting art of this
beautiful young woman. At the time, the Canadian Arctic was
a far-away, mysterious land, known only for its inhospitable
climate and the native people, who somehow managed to
survive there. This film opened the eyes of the outside world
and, as each annual print collection was released ‘down south,’
the name Kenojuak became synonymous with the mystery,
bounty and beauty of Canada’s far north.
When asked to speak about her motivation as an artist,
Kenojuak often said that “to make something beautiful” was the
inspiration behind her work. This included her artistic decisions
about her subjects, her choice of colours and her compositions.
For Kenojuak, the choice of subject was a means to an end.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, she was not a storyteller or
a narrator. Her concern was always with the image itself, and the
subject was often resolved during the process of drawing.
She was left-handed, so she would start at the top left corner
of the page and move slowly around it, filling it with fantastic
22 six star magazine
combinations of birds, animals and people. As she said: “I
may start off at one end of a form not even knowing what
it’s going to be; just drawing as I’m thinking, thinking as I’m
drawing. I try to make things which satisfy my eye, that are
pleasing to me.”
Her ‘eye’ was extraordinary, especially for a visual artist with
no formal training. She was tentative at first, but very quickly
developed the free-flowing, assured line and sense of design
so evident throughout her career. Before being offered paper
and pencils, she had limited means for creative expression, but
she worked with what she had. Like most Inuit women of her
generation, sewing was her skill and she worked with seal skin
and caribou hide to make appliqué designs. One of these was the
basis for her first, and now one of her most famous images, Rabbit
Eating Seaweed. It was derived from a sealskin appliqué design
that she created on a handbag.
Once Kenojuak had drawing materials at her disposal, she never
looked back. As new materials became available, she moved from
graphite to coloured pencil to fibre-tip pen to acrylic. She chose
bright, pleasing combinations of primary colours and adorned
her favourite subjects—especially the owl and the raven—with
exaggerated plumage, filling the page with bursts of colour.