Johnny Inukpuk was recognized and promoted as an important artist already in the early 1950s. A number of his large and impressive sculptures from the period 1960-1965 - the pinnacle of his artistic career - are housed in major public and corporate collections and are widely illustrated (see references in our online catalogue).

Mother and Child, Scraping a Skin is, in both its height and its sheer bulk, one of Johnny Inukpuk’s largest works; if the woman were to to straighten up from her seated crouching position she would stand several inches taller than the monumental Mother and Child, Carrying a Pail (see First Arts Auctions, July 2020, Lot 24). As imposing as this sculpture is, however, it is undoubtedly also one of the artist’s most beautiful and charming creations. Johnny cherished his young wife Mary, and has once again beautifully immortalized her in an image that shows her thoughtfully attending to her work while carrying one of their seven children. Once again, Inukpuk has created a sculpture that dazzles us with both its vision and its workmanship. The interplay of the sculptural parts and details, whether they be the massive forms of her clothing or the subtlest delineations of hair and stitches, is masterfully orchestrated. It is a joy to move around this sculpture and to linger over its many delights: the undulating folds of clothing and the rippling of the parka fringes; the subtly incised texture of the sealskin; the strong yet gentle features of the mother’s serene face; the oh so lovely delineation of her braids. Inukpuk’s genius - his gift to us - is the ability to create a perfect union between the visual and the tactile qualities of sculpture. Glorious.

Literature: For other important, contemporaneous masterpieces by the artist see Mother and Child, Carrying a Pail in First Arts Auctions, July 2020, Lot 24; Mother Feeding Child in the TD Bank Collection, illustrated in George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit (Toronto: M&S, 1972/92), fig. 55, in Christine Lalonde and Natalie Ribkoff, ItuKiagatta! Inuit Sculpture from the Collection of the TD Bank Financial Group (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2005), p. 45, and elsewhere; Man Wringing Sealskin Line, also in the TD Bank Collection, in Swinton (1972/92), fig. 292; Mother and Child, displayed at the Balshine Collection at the Vancouver International Airport (YVR), in Arctic Art Museum Ltd., Arctic Art Masterworks (Vancouver, 1998), unpag. For a fine smaller but thematically similar work by the artist see Marion Scott Gallery, Inspiration: Four Decades of Sculpture by Canadian Inuit (Vancouver, 1995), cat. 1. For other important mothers and children by Inukpuk from the early-mid 1960s see Walker’s Auctions, May 2015, Lot 34, and May 2016, Lot 35. Darlene Coward Wight’s catalogue Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955 (WAG, 2006), pp. 83-87, illustrates several important early works by Inukpuk and discusses his early life and artistic career.