Arnaqu Ashevak, adopted son of Kenojuak Ashevak, was a brilliant artist whose career was cut off too soon with his premature death from cancer in 2009. Throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, he consistently surprised the Inuit art world with his continued search for innovative subject matter and media. Arnaqu’s mastery was well-recognized at the time when he was selected to attend the Banff Centre for the Arts for a workshop in ceramics.

Known for his mobiles made of bone and antler and his drawings inspired by global images, this drawing of a quiet and serene landscape at sunset seems to be a stylistic deviation for Arnaqu. This, however, was part of the magic of Arnaqu’s artistry – rather than sticking with a conventional style, he constantly pushed the limits of subject and media. He was also seamlessly able to show his mastery of various media used by his colleagues in Kinngait. In this simple and yet sumptuous landscape, he uses coloured pencil to masterfully capture the serenity and beauty of a summer sunset on South Baffin Island.

References: For more information about the artist, see “A Filtered Vision: The World According to Arnaqu Ashevak” in Inuit Art Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 24-31. For further examples of Arnaqu’s drawn work, see the exhibition Making Marks: Drawings From Kinngait, Toronto, Ontario, First Arts, 22 January - 24 February 2023. For some brief information about the artist, see Ingo Hessel, Arctic Spirit: Inuit Art from the Albrecht Collection at the Heard Museum, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Phoenix: Heard Museum, 2006), cat 57, p. 67.