After spending his formative years living a traditional life on the land, only beginning to produce graphics after an accident rendered him unable to hunt, the untrained Parr approached art making with an uninhibited spontaneity. Parr’s bold, gestural drawing style can be felt with intensity in the present print, Hunter Hauling a Seal of 1966. While his distinctive visual language seems incredibly automatic, we can easily read Parr’s intention for this scene: a remembrance of a successful hunting trip. Parr constructs his fortunate hunter with a powerfully forward stride. The figure’s raised head, the graceful swell of his hunched back, and especially the suggestion of the weight on his front leg, all indicate his advancing movement. Even the captured seal seems to fly behind the hunter, lifted horizontally like a celebratory flag as he treads forward. As the movement is actually suspended, our eyes have the leisure to explore Parr’s forms and the frenetic, wiry lines of the body of Parr’s hunter and seal. We note the pitch-black circle with a nose depicted in profile, which appears in only a handful of other works by the artist. Its inclusion is a powerful one that focuses our gaze at the centre of the action.

References: Image reproduced in Parr: A Print Retrospective, (Kinngait: Kingait Press, 1979), no. 26, p. 60; Maria von Finckenstein, “Cape Dorset Impressions: Inuit Stonecut and Stencil Print Techniques,” Inuit Art Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 3, Fall 1995, p. 51. This print is reminiscent of another stonecut by Parr: Men Pulling Walrus from 1964 #25, illustrated in Dorothy Labarge, From Drawing to Print: Perception and Process in Cape Dorset Art (Calgary: Glenbow Museum, 1986), p. 29.