This arresting image was extracted from a 1970 coloured pencil drawing by Anguhadluq, in which the drummer is surrounded by a radiating crowd of people. [1] It is, however, a wonderfully striking and iconic print image; the drum is like the sun, taking the drummer for a celestial ride! As Helga Goetz suggests, “Anguhadluq’s brilliant yellow drum is as large as it is loud. The energy expended by the dwarfed figure of the drummer reinforces the power of the drum.” [2]

1. See the original drawing and print in Bernadette Driscoll, Baker Lake Prints & Print-Drawings 1970-76, (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1983), p. 39. This happened regularly in the early years of Cape Dorset printmaking; see Lot 27.

2. Helga Goetz in The Inuit Print, 1977, p. 227.

References: Drum Dancing is reproduced in Helga Goetz, The Inuit Print, international travelling exhibition, (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada and the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1977), pl. 136, p. 227. Illustrated alongside Anguhadluq’s larger, original 1970 drawing in Bernadette Driscoll, Baker Lake Prints & Print-Drawings 1970-76, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1983), p. 39. For a further look into the artist’s work, see Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1993), and Jean Blodgett, Tuu'luq / Anguhadluq: An Exhibition of Works by Marion Tuu'luq and Luke Anguhadluq of Baker Lake, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1976).