Geese and Man is one of forty-six previously unreleased prints from Cape Dorset that were featured in the 1994 McMichael Canadian Art Collection exhibition Cape Dorset Revisited (no. 11), which was accompanied by Susan Gustavison’s publication Arctic Expressions: Inuit Art and the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, 1961–1989 (cat. 21). Two of the original four Kinngait printmakers, Kananginak Pootoogook and Iyola Kingwatsiak, were asked to decide which never-before-released prints to exhibit and market in 1994. The prints had been held back from the art market by the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council for various, often opaque, reasons. Kananginak’s typically droll observation on this quirk of Inuit art history adds perspective: “Maybe the people that used to pick the prints didn’t have good eyesight. Maybe that’s why there are so many good ones [1].”

Likely based on a drawing from around 1962, during Parr’s Period II, Geese and Man invites comparison with his famous stencil print Blue Geese Feeding of 1961. The composition brims with dynamism as a flock of geese dominates the surface, their wings cutting sharp arcs of black and blue across the page. At the bottom edge, a disproportionately small man and his dachshund-like dog strain upward, their gestures almost lost against the force of the birds above. The man seems to beckon us, caught in the thrill of the moment, while the geese sweep the composition into motion and colour. The work embodies Parr’s disregard—or more accurately his entirely original approach—to balance and proportion, creating an image that feels exuberant and highly appealing.

1. Kananginak Pootoogook quoted in Susan Gustavison, Arctic Expressions: Inuit Art and the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council, 1961–1989, (Kleinburg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1994), p. 94.