With great economy of means — using a single stencil, rotated 120 degrees and twinned on the sheet — the scene of Two Hawks Fighting is one of intense action. The heads of the two hawks careen toward one another in the centre of the page; their beaks are stencilled so crisply that we can almost hear their combative caterwauls. The bodies of these aerial foes swirl around the centre point as if locked in a fierce tango. We sense the great controlled tension that rushes through the wings towards the remarkable talons, and down to the tail feathers. Ohotaq abandoned his artistic career in the early 1960s to work as a school janitor. He took it up again after his retirement in the 1990s, contributing dozens of wonderful images to annual print collections.

References: Ohotaq’s contribution to the early Kinngait graphic catalogues were very few as the artist essentially abandoned his artistic career in the early 1960s. As such, there is limited information on the artist’s early career. After his retirement, the artist began to draw again and enjoyed a celebrated career, for additional information and later works, see John A. Westren, “Toward The Millennium,” in Leslie Boyd Ryan, Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective, (San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007), p. 250 as well as Jessica Newton “Drawing Large in Cape Dorset,” Inuit Art Quarterly, Fall/Winter 2011, Vol. 26, No. 3-4, p. 14-20.