Marion Tuu’luq

Dense, vibrant, and skilfully constructed, Untitled (Winter Scene) by Marion Tuu’luq is a rich tableau of winter life in stroud and felt. With its crown of igloos, it seems to offer a counterpoint to the artist’s many spring and summer scenes, dotted by warm weather tents.

Winter in the Arctic has traditionally been the Inuit ceremonial season, a time of transformation, and of commune with spirits, both benign and malevolent. Notable in the present work are the many images of the apparently supernatural amidst the everyday hurly-burly of the composition. Animals with humanoid faces, humanoid figures with tails, and toward the bottom left of the composition, a wolf or fox-like figure standing on two legs, seem to cause little concern to their more commonplace counterparts.

A sprawling, monumental scene by Tuu’luq, the work embodies a marvellous sense of rhythmic, sometimes colliding movement. The frenetic depiction of life on the move, or the raucous, at times chaotic life of the settlement is distinctive to Tuu’luq’s oeuvre, but is depicted as elsewhere in the artist’s work using a linear stylistic device more commonly found in the drawings of Tuu’luq’s husband Luke Anguhadluq (see lot 19).

Speaking of Tuul’uq’s work in her 2002 book on the artist, Marie Bouchard presciently observed that “[Tuu’luq’s] compositions are based on repetitions of format, motif, and colour that are as rhythmic as the seasons. All explore simple yet intricate aboriginal notions of regeneration, a rebirth that contributes to a sense of place, history, and endurance.”[1]

[1] Marie Bouchard, Marion Tuu’luq (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2002), 34.

Untitled (Winter Scene), is one of over 20 exceptional works in the present auction from the important lifetime collection of former Northwest Territories Arts and Crafts Development Officer David Sutherland.

An artist in his own right, and former student of the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr Institute), Sutherland developed a lifelong passion for Inuit art, and was an outspoken advocate and author on all matters Inuit, in addition to his role for over 20 years as Northwest Territories Arts and Crafts Development Officer.

Sutherland and his wife Aiko were popular residents in the various locations in which they were posted, including Inuvik, Churchill, and Yellowknife. Successful in his work, he had to decline promotions to be able to stay in the Arctic, where he continued to develop artists’ facilities into environments of creativity and self-discipline—values not reinforced by all of Sutherland’s predecessors.

Sutherland’s work brought him into intimate contact with important artists who he continued to champion after his retirement from his post in 1986, including Marion Tuu’luq, Janet Kigusiuq, John Pangnark, Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok, John Kavik, Andy Miki, Luke Iksiktaaryuk, Mathew Aqigaaq and countless others. An avid collector, Sutherland also purchased works, primarily from the Miqsuvik Sewing Shop, and other craft stores in the communities in which he served.

Gunther Abrahamson, “David Sutherland (1931-2004)”, Inuit Art Quarterly. Vol. 20. No. 1, spring, 2025, 43.
Marie Bouchard, Marion Tuu’luq (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2002), 100.