One of Jessie Oonark’s eight artistically talented children, Mary Yuusipik began her art career in 1964 as a carver. Although she made sculptures steadily for decades, Yuusipik is best remembered for her beautiful works on cloth. Typically illustrating Arctic animals and landscape, they are notable for the subtle artistry of their embroidery. Yuusipik also created a series of late-career drawings that were featured in Darlene Coward Wight’s 2019 solo exhibition and catalogue at the WAG.

From the mid 1980s on, Yuusipik preferred to carve on a relatively large scale, unlike most women artists in Baker Lake (see Father Carrying a Child on His Shoulders in the First Arts December 2020 auction catalogue, Lot 54). Unlike Miriam Qiyuk’s crowded and joyful Family Gathering (previous lot), Yuusipik’s Family depicts a small huddle of seemingly lonely or grief-stricken figures. It’s an achingly poignant work whose raw emotion is movingly reflected in the equally raw carving style. The cut of the mother’s skin amautiq suggests a memory from the distant past. Yuusipik married Norman Singaqti shortly after her father, Kabloonak’s, death in 1954, leaving her mother Oonark and her two youngest siblings Nancy Pukingrnak and William Noah to begin her own family. Perhaps this is a portrait of the three of them.