Janet Kigusiuq had a long career as a multimedia artist, variously creating drawings and wall hangings, and even paintings and collages. This drawing is from later in her life, at a time when she had left behind the incredibly detailed drawings of her earlier career in which even eyelashes would be depicted. As Kigusiuq matured, she began to loosen her strokes and gradually added small areas of almost “colour field” patches to still mostly narrative scenes. This drawing shows her late mature style in which large areas of colour actually define the composition. These drawings were never truly abstract; in this drawing it is easy to find a winding river and the varied contours of the land. Landscape is at the same time a joyous celebration of colour which, energized by the rough grain of the paper, threatens to burst through Kigusiuq’s carefully drawn margins.

References: For very similar contemporaneous landscape drawings by Kigusiuq see Cynthia Waye, The Urge to Abstraction: The graphic art of Janet Kigusiuq (Toronto: Museum of Inuit Art, 2008).