Drawings and Prints from Cape Dorset
One evening in early November, after a delightful anniversary dinner at Bacanora (the Lord’s name be praised), Katie and I paid a visit to the Heard Museum for the Early Days exhibition of indigenous art “from coast-to-coast-to-coast” in Canada. There was much to appreciate in the exhibit, and tremendous variety, but I was especially gobsmacked when we finally reached the room featuring the work of Tim Pitsiulak.
A hunter as well as an accomplished artist, Pitsiulak (1967–2016) lived and worked in Cape Dorset, an Inuit town in a part of Canada that’s even colder than most of the other inhabited parts. Trees don’t grow there; that kind of thing. But Pitsiulak’s drawings and carvings reveal that this place he loved truly was—and is—teeming with life. In addition to polar bears, walruses, and whales, we also catch glimpses of twenty-first-century Inuit life, replete with the impressive machinery needed for a remote but globally connected hunting village such as Cape Dorset.
“Tim is particularly inspired by the whales that frequent the cold, Arctic waters—the beluga and the bowhead—because, as he says, nobody really knows much about them,” reads Pitsiulak’s bio at Dorset Fine Arts. “The bowhead in particular is a majestic and mysterious creature and frequently he will embellish his drawings of these animals with ‘tattoos’ of ancient artifacts.”
One of the artworks I spent a lot of time with was Bowhead with Beluga Whales (above). At a cursory glance, a landlubber like me will quickly recognize we’re looking at one large whale (that's the bowhead) with a number of comparatively smaller whales (those are the belugas) swimming through that frigid water together.
But if you slow down and take a closer look, you’ll see there’s so much more going on. Rather than describing those fine details—including some of those “tattoos” mentioned a moment ago—consider these close-ups. (Pardon the glare; I was photographing through glass.)
Knowing how much I loved the work of this new-to-me artist, for my birthday Katie gave me a copy of Tim Pitsiulak: Drawings and Prints from Cape Dorset (Pomegranate). It features a biographical essay by Leslie Boyd and includes many, many of Pitsiulak’s artworks including that dazzling Bowhead with Beluga Whales. It’s been fun to learn more of the stories behind the drawings, and I know this is a book I’ll want to revisit time and again. Especially in winter—or, better, during those long summer months when I want to pretend we live somewhere that gets cold.
Early Days is open at the Heard Museum in Phoenix through January 2, 2024.
