Pudlo Pudlat
With the complementary peachy orange and soft electric blues of this work, Pudlo Pudlat (1916–1992) has assembled a mass of contradictions. Using an acrylic wash—acrylic paint thinned with water until it becomes translucent—in conjunction with ink and coloured pencil, Pudlat’s material choice reflects one of the central themes of his work: depictions of traditional life merging with modern technology. Here, this at-the-time new technique mixes with coloured pencil and ink, mediums that Inuit artists had already long embraced.
The layering of these media is twinned by the piece’s composition, with two figures watching from a seemingly stacked landscape as a loon floats along the green water. Each is flanked by a single caribou, their distinct silhouettes rising above the horizon line. These two characters share some relation, bearing the same heart-shaped face and middle-parted hair. Their surrounding landscapes are mirror images of each other, in the above the caribou’s magnificent rack of antlers peeks up from the left, and from the right on the other.
Pudlat began working with acrylics in the early 1970s alongside a group of six other Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU, artists: Kiugak Ashoona, CC, RCA (1933–2014), Kingmeata Etidlooie (1915–1989), Napachie Pootoogook (1938–2002), Lucy Qinnuayuak (1915–1982), Eegyvadluk Ragee (1920–1983) and Sorosiluto Ashoona. They initially learned the wash technique from painter Kate Graham, who visited the studio as an artist in residence. By 1980, many of the Kinngait artists’ paintings had travelled throughout major cities in North America and Europe, with a selection featured in the 1980 Cape Dorset Print Collection catalogue.
This acrylic wash painting technique became a frequent feature of Pudlat’s later work, signalling that although it is often positioned as a new medium in Inuit art, celebrated artists such as Pudlat have been using paint for nearly 50 years—quietly reclaiming a crucial and often overlooked pocket of Inuit art history.