Few artists have as instantly recognizable a style as Jessie Oonark, and this lovely and quite rare print from the 1970 inaugural Baker Lake Collection is truly a classic image. It is based on a 1968 drawing in the George Swinton Collection at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, illustrated in Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective (1986), cat. 25. In an unpublished interview with Marion Jackson, Oonark revealed that the image depicts the wandering hero Kiviuq’s bird wife and their two children, who are asking their father to join them [1]. Oonark reprised this wonderful image (in duplicate) in one of her most spectacular works on cloth, Untitled (Spirit Figures) from c. 1970 (see First Arts, Toronto, 28 May 2019, Lot 24; and the 1986 WAG catalogue (1986) cat. 40.

1. Jackson, Transcripts of Interviews with Jessie Oonark and her Children (Spring 1983), p. 14.

References: For the evolution and breadth of Jessie Oonark’s work see the landmark exhibition catalogue by Jean Blodgett and Marie Bouchard, Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986).