Abraham Anghik, David’s younger brother, occupies a pivotal role in the trajectory of David's artistic development, a role shaped in part by Anghik’s own studies under the esteemed Iñupiaq artist Ron Senungetuk. This lineage of instruction, Senungetuk to Anghik to David, forms an undeniable throughline in the evolution of David’s own practice.

In Yua: Spirit of the Arctic: Highlights from the Thomas G. Fowler Collection, David recalls a formative moment in 1972 when his brother visited him in Vancouver. David recalls, “He [Anghik] introduced me to what he had been studying in Fairbanks, Alaska. He introduced me to stone carving. I was fascinated [...].” (p. 102).

This was not simply an introduction to a technique but an initiation into a way of seeing, a framework for translating material into form. Anghik’s influence, and by transmission that of Senungetuk, is unmistakable in David’s approach—particularly in his treatment of mass, balance, and the confident economy of his sculptural line.

In this Caribou Shaman, the lineage is much apparent, where a traditional subject in circumpolar art—the caribou (or reindeer)—is rendered in a distilled, almost elemental form. The figure resists unnecessary detail, its surface largely uninterrupted save for a series of notches along the front of the body, subtle incisions that suggest the texture of fur. Even the antler rack is reduced to its essence: a single, smooth line of caribou antler, balancing atop the head.

Nadine Di Monte