A veritable icon of the early period of graphic production in Kinngait, Dream from 1963 features the classic crisply rendered silhouette-like figures bursting with ecstatic energy that Kenojuak Ashevak was producing at this time. What is most impressive about Dream is the confidence and mastery of the elegant sweeps and lines, composed by Kenojuak and printed by Lukta Qiatsuk without hesitation. Here, massed forms of coalescing black and green spread across the mulberry sheet like a shadow drama.

On two occasions, Jean Blodgett referenced this particular print as being a fine example of the influence that Kenojuak’s skills as a seamstress had on her graphic works. From Dorothy Eber’s interviews with Kenojuak, we learn that the artist made cardboard cut-out patterns, first for her sealskin appliqué designs and later because she believed they would aid in her earliest drawings. This study lent itself to the exploration of positive and negative space and eventually toward depicting abstracted scenes of figures entwined in complex, lyrical movement.

References: Image reproduced in Jean Blodgett, Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selection from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1983), fig. 48, reproduced p. 94; Jean Blodgett, Kenojuak, (Toronto: Mintmark Press Ltd., 1985), fig. 39, reproduced, unpaginated; Anna Hudson, ‎Jocelyn Piirainen, ‎& Georgiana Uhlyarik, Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, exh. cat., (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2018), p. 51. For Blodgett’s discussion of the work, see p. 40. For a discussion on Kenojuak's early prints and drawings, see Dorothy LaBarge, From Drawing to Print: Perception and Process in Cape Dorset Art, (Calgary: Glenbow Museum, 1986), p. 22.