Baptized as an Anglican in 1944 as "Jessie Onak,” by the mid-1960s Oonark had begun to incorporate Christian themes in her art. She often blended traditional shamanic and Christian imagery in her drawings and works on cloth but occasionally, as in this important drawing from 1978, Oonark focused solely on a Christian theme. Illustrating the intensity of her devotion, Oonark presents one of the most enduring themes in Christian art: the crucifixion of Jesus. The figure of Christ is frontally facing, his limbs elongated, and his body limned in a warm yellow orange, as if glowing with brilliant spiritual presence. In the top left and lower right, two figures cast their gazes downward, their hands raised in anguish and sorrow. Elements of other aspects of the Passion of Christ are present in the work. In the top right, a tormentor readies what may be a whip but might be a hammer. In the lower centre two men – likely soldiers – raise their arms upwards as they elevate the crucifix. They are flanked by two figures whose arms are held forth in a seeming bid to arrest the action.

Oonark depicts the wooden cross in a way that alters our perception of the event. What is presumably the heavy upright post of the cross is here shown horizontally, dividing the image into two tiers – which happens to neatly conform to the artist’s favoured compositional style. Since the post and the crosspiece are shown separately, we wonder if the cross is being either constructed or dismantled. If it is the latter that Oonark is illustrating, this image of Christ as a floating or even soaring bird-like figure – accentuating the ethereal and supernatural rather than the physical - probably represents his Ascension, which explains the title Giver of Life. Remarkable.

This drawing was translated into a famous stencil print by Magdalene Ukpatiku for the 1983/84 Baker Lake collection (#16). Because Oonark was too ill to travel, a copy of the print was presented by Janet Kigusiuq, Oonark’s eldest daughter, to His Holiness Pope John Paul II during a public mass held in Ottawa in September 1984, as a “gift from the Inuit of Canada.”

References: In 1984, the print created from this image was presented by Janet Kigusiuq, Oonark’s daughter, to Pope John Paul II during his visit to Ottawa as a “gift from the Inuit of Canada.” (see, Marie Bouchard in Jules & Nancy Heller, eds., North American Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, [New York: Routledge, 2013], p. 303); In Up Here Magazine, in June/July 1985, Sandra Souchette titled her obituary on the artist Jessie Oonark: Giver of Life; The resulting stonecut print of the same name is reproduced in Ken Mantel et al., Tuvaq: Inuit Art and the Modern World, (Bristol, UK: Sansom and Company Ltd., 2010), fig. 128, p. 134; and in Marie Bouchard, “Old master: Oonark,” Inuit Art Quarterly, Vol. 2, no. 1, Winter 1987, p. 5; the work is mentioned Cunera Buijs, Kim van Dam, Frédéric Laugrand, eds., People, Places, and Practices in the Arctic Anthropological Perspectives on Representation, ebook 2022, p. 249.