Lucassie Ikkidluak, much like his fellow Kimmirut artist Nalenik Temela (see Lot 118), makes the interplay of various textures within the same piece at least as important as the subject itself - although with startlingly different results. This Grazing Muskox is a striking example of the seemingly endless degrees of textured surfaces that Ikkidluak can coax from a single piece of stone. Many of Ikkidluak’s early sculptures feature a central figure (or figures) firmly situated on a landscape base. He incorporated the use of a base as a “groundline” for his first few muskoxen but discontinued it in the early 1990s. Grazing Muskox is, therefore, an interesting transitional sculpture where the base remains part of the narrative. The subject is portrayed sniffing the tundra in search of vegetation. Muskoxen are herbivores; during the winter they commonly eat willows but use their strong hooves to dig through the snow to expose lichens and other vegetation.

Lucassie Ikkidluak began carving seriously in 1967. While most of his works from the 1960s and 1970s depict human figures, by the mid 1980s Ikkidluak had begun carving imposing portrayals of muskoxen, which would become the major focus of his oeuvre going forward. Today, Ikkidluak is the foremost living carver of muskoxen producing works which are almost photographic in their realism.

References: For similar works by the artist see George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992 edition only), fig. 897, p. 268. See also Darlene Coward Wight, The Harry Winrob Collection of Inuit Sculpture, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2008), p. 124; Darlene Wight, The Stafford Collection of Inuit Sculpture, (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2012), fig. 10; Institute of American Arts Museum, Keeping Our Stories Alive: An Exhibition of the Art and Crafts from Dene and Inuit of Canada (Santa Fe, 1995), cat. 47; and Amway Environmental Foundation, Masters of the Arctic: Art in the Service of the Earth (1990), p. 32 (international touring exhibition inaugurated at the United Nations General Assembly Gallery in NYC, 1989).