We have lauded Iyola Kingwatsiak’s talents as a printmaker elsewhere in this catalogue but this charming print demonstrates the artist’s diversity and talents as a draughtsman. The sleek shape of the geese combined with the tonal variation in their inked forms to demonstrate their lighter coloured breast feathers, illustrates Iyola’s unique compositional ability and outstanding technical execution. As both artist and printer for Geese Leaving, Iyola’s arrangement produces a scene of graceful movement and delight.

References: Geese Leaving is reproduced in Carl Weiselberger, “Talks About Art,” Ottawa Citizen, 31 July 1965, p. 4. Iyola is most famous as a printmaker, but he designed twenty-one print images as well, and was also a gifted sculptor (in fact he was originally a carver). Iyola was truly a “Renaissance Man.” Besides being an artist and printmaker he was a hunter, worked as a probation officer as well as a justice of the peace in the community, served on many committees and chaired many boards involved in community affairs, and was even Cape Dorset’s first midwife from 1961-65!