Even though this sculpture is quite large and massive, it has a hesitant quality and even a naïveté that prompts us to see it as a depiction of a child. Its proportions, too, are suggestive of this. Seen in this light, the figure’s raw, almost brutal aspect is transformed into a charming, almost winsome portrait. That Kavik was still able to create evocative, powerful sculptures of this scale in his eighties never ceases to amaze us.

References: For a good overview of Kavik’s work from the decade of the 1980s see the solo exhibition catalogue John Kavik, (Vancouver: Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, 1990); this catalogue illustrates a number of large and imposing single figures. For an equally large and similarly styled Mother and Child by the artist, formerly in the Wagonfeld collection, see Survival: Inuit Art, (Loveland, CO: Loveland Museum Gallery, 2004), p. 98, and Walker’s Auctions, Inuit Art: Masterpieces from the Wagonfeld Collection (May, 2016, Lot 26). For the section on John Kavik in Norman Zepp, Pure Vision: The Keewatin Spirit, (Regina: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1986), see pages 108-119. For an appreciation of the artist and his work see Stanley Zazelenchuk, “Kavik: The Man and the Artist” in Arts & Culture of the North, (Vol. IV, No. 2 Spring 1980), pp. 219-221.