Pitseolak Ashoona

From CanadianIdentity.com: significant Canadian events, history, inventions, and people

CanadianIdentity.com is an educational web site intended to help Canadians and our friends around the world better understand what forms our Canadian identity. Canadian identity includes what Canadians think and believe about themselves and our country of Canada.

Please search or browse for Canadian buildings, documents, dreams, economy, education, environment, events, expressions, faith, groups, inventions, languages, people, places, programs and symbols. You may read about significant people who visited or lived in Canada.
Please add an entry or make a suggestion here.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

---

Who was Pitseolak Ashoona ?

Pitseolak Ashoona was a Canadian graphic artist . She is known for lively prints and drawings showing "the things we did long ago before there were many white men" and for imaginative renderings of spirits and monsters. She began working in the late 1950s after James HOUSTON started printmaking experiments at Cape Dorset. She created several thousand drawings reflecting her love and intimate knowledge of traditional INUIT life. Talent ran in her family. She was married in 1922 to Ashoona, a capable hunter who died young, and their sons Kumwartok QAQAQ and KIAWAK Ashoona and daughter Napachie Pootoogook also became artists. Highly articulate, she told her story in the illustrated oral biography Pitseolak: Pictures out of My Life (from recorded interviews by D. Eber, 1971), which became an NFB animated documentary. She was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1974.

(b on Nottingham I, NWT c 1904; d at Cape Dorset, NWT 28 May 1983)

Bibliography

• http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006312