Additional Images

Provenance:

Private collection, Ottawa, ON

Note:

A sculptor of virtuoso talent, and the brother of renowned artist Osuitok Ipeelee, Sheokjuk Oqutaq started carving at a young age, long before the arrival of James Houston in Kinngait (Cape Dorset), and continued to make exquisite artworks throughout his career. [1] In 1979 Sheokjuk told Marion Jackson:

“I carved people almost at the beginning when I wasn’t carving very long. I really liked those carvings. I have built houses and I have built boats. Making a carving is harder work than making a house or a boat—especially when the stone is hard.” [2]

The present sculpture is a superb example of Sheokjuk’s gift for simplicity, and is closely related to an example dated to 1949, sold by Waddington’s in April of 2008.

Looking at the smiling face of this crisply carved, compact hunter with his harpoon, it is readily understandable why Sheokjuk was fond of his early carvings.

(1) D.C. Wight, Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955. (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2006), 153.
(2) Marion E. Jackson, “The Ashoonas of Cape Dorset: In Touch with Tradition,” North/Nord, Fall 1982, p. 14-18, quoted in ibid., 154

Related Works:
Waddington’s Auctioneers, Toronto, ON, April 2008, lot 130. Click here to read more


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