Additional Images

Provenance:

Inukshuk Gallery, Waterloo, ON, 1977
Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

An artist of an exceptionally fertile imagination and seemingly boundless creative energy, Jessie Oonark produced a truly remarkable body of drawings, prints and nivingajuliat (tapestry or wall hangings) over her long career.

Drawing from childhood memory, and from dreams, Oonark’s images often take on a fanciful and mysterious character, as is the case with the present depiction of an owl, whose staring eyes, and arm-like wings remind us that owls and some other birds were once closely associated with transforming shaman among people of the Keewatin, an association which would not have been lost on Oonark, whose father and grandfather were said to have been shaman.[1]

A departure from conventions of square and rectangular presentation, Untitled (Owl), circa 1970-1975 is a striking example of figural nivingajuliat from a period of experimentation in the early to mid-1970s in which Oonark investigated a series of unconventional profiles, including ulus, human figures, and snow beaters.[2] While a small number of compositions by Oonark include bird imagery related to the present work, large single animal profile nivingajuliat by Oonark are remarkably uncommon.

[1] Jean Blodgett and Marie Bouchard, Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986), 65.
[2] Ibid.