Like her brother Harold Qarliksaq (see Lot 22), Winnie Tatya was raised in the Garry Lake region northwest of Qamani’tuaq and moved to the Baker Lake area in the late 1950s. She had experimented with both carving and sewn clothing and crafts by the mid 1960s and even made a few drawings in the late 1960s (two prints based on her drawings were released in the 1970 inaugural Baker Lake collection). But her true talent and passion lay in sewing and embroidery, and she went on to have a long career in the textile arts. Her works have been widely published and exhibited (including in a solo exhibition at the Upstairs Gallery in Winnipeg in 1982), and are held in numerous public collections. Her compositions are notable for both the arrangement of the figures in various alignments, and the quality of her embroidery. Not content to show figures or scenes in horizontal tiers, Tatya often situates her people and animals in landscapes or in diagonal patterns, usually incorporating vertical symmetry. This fine example is among her most imaginative compositions. Divided into geometric shapes and populated by human and animal figures, this work on cloth simultaneously exhibits structure and playful freedom. Tatya plays with both colour and the orientation and movement of its subjects.