Evocative of Kenojuak’s famous Enchanted Owl released one year prior, we could think of Multi-feathered Bird as a “pared down” version of that print. This splendid, elegantly composed image captures a bird in motion, darting swiftly toward a light source that gently illuminates its top half. In this sense, it can be interpreted as a study in motion and speed, as the tail feathers gradually sway backwards. It bears stylistic similarity to another image in Kenojuak’s oeuvre: the 1960 stonecut print Birds of the Sea, specifically the singular bird pictured gliding across the bottom half of the sheet. Even though one bird is swimming and the other flying, the composition of both multi-feathered birds in motion reveal Kenojuak’s love of birds and their movements already in the earliest years of her career. A review of the artist’s early drawings reveals many more examples of this type of bird imagery, often as part of larger compositions [1].

The suggestion of a light source gradually illuminating the top portion of Multi-feathered Bird is not unlike that of Kenojuak’s notable print The Arrival of the Sun, released in 1962. We know that the early 1960s were a period of bold experimentation with different coloured inks in Cape Dorset, and this print, among others, is reflective of such experiments. It should be noted that the variability in the application of the inks in these prints result in each numbered copy being almost unique.

1. See for example the c. 1962 drawing Sunwoman and Birds, in Jean Blodgett, Kenojuak (Toronto: Firefly Books / Mintmark Press Ltd., 1985), fig. viii); and a related untitled drawing c. 1961 in Marion E. Jackson and Judith M. Nasby, Contemporary Inuit Drawings, (Guelph: Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, 1987), cat. 32.

References: This print is Illustrated in Jean Blodgett, Kenojuak, (Toronto: Mintmark Press, 1981), fig. viii and Arts of the Eskimo (Oxford: Signum Oxford, 1974), cat. 30, p. 49. See also the Oscar-nominated short film by John Feeney, Eskimo Artist: Kenojuak (NFB, 1963), wherein Kenojuak and her husband and artistic collaborator Johnniebo are captured creating shadow puppets upon the interior walls of their igloo, using hands to simulate flying birds and howling wolves. These silhouetted forms created by one’s hands and figures suggest that this could be the source of the artist’s earliest images such as this one. For more information on this famous artist see Jean Blodgett, Kenojuak, (Toronto: Firefly Books / Mintmark Press Ltd., 1985); Anna Hudson, ‎Jocelyn Piirainen, ‎& Georgiana Uhlyarik, Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, exh. cat., (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2018); Odette Leroux ed., Inuit Women Artists, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994).