Jessie Oonark's striking composition captures a compelling episode from the Qiviuq (Kiviuk) story, a theme often seen in works by artists in Qamani’tuaq and especially by her daughter, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk (see Lot 133) – but seldom in Oonark’s own works.

In a departure from her usual concentration on a singular element or figure of a legend when she did depict them, here, Oonark – echoing the style of her early works from the late 1950s and early '60s – forgoes Western artistic conventions, instead offering a scene rich with varied spatial and chronological perspectives.

Inclusion of didactic text is, likewise, atypical for Oonark’s work [1]. However, the passage seems to be provided with a somewhat free-spirited disregard for the accompanying visuals [2]. We first see our hero observing the pool of birds at lower right. Moving counterclockwise, the scene shifts indoors to the bear's den, depicted as a snowhouse in profile. Here, Qiviuq is portrayed from the side, brandishing an axe and lunging toward the bear, which is aerially presented in its lair. In the composition's centre, Qiviuq is dynamically rendered in multiple stances, highlighting the intensity of his flight, while the bear's singular depiction serves dual purposes: it represents its role in the chase and also its imminent approach toward the stream. The depiction stops short of showing the grizzly’s attempt to cross or the consequences of its overindulgence. This stream, to the upper right, is shown beginning to bulge, its left boundary line distending to signify its growth at Qiviuq's behest. The narrative then gracefully arcs back to a calm, where Qiviuq resumes his observation of the birds in the water.

The story unfolds on a ground that is intensely coloured by Oonark in the orange-pink tones of a blush sunset. The narrative's temporal scope is broadened by the depiction of both day and night within the same frame; daylight is signified by a radiant, yellow sun while the night is conveyed by a slender yellow-orange crescent moon and an array of yellow and blue stars.

This drawing, transformed into a print for the 1980 annual graphics catalogue (#9), had its syllabic narrative omitted but the story was presented.

1. It is unclear if the text was, indeed, provided by Oonark herself. See Blodgett / Bouchard, 1986, p. 43.

2. See Jean Blodgett and Marie Bouchard, Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986), p. 43

References: See Jean Blodgett and Marie Bouchard, Jessie Oonark: A Retrospective (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1986), cat. no. 8 for a drawing of the Kiviuq story by Oonark from c. 1963. See also Qiviuq, 1970 by Luke Anguhadluq, a contemporary of Jessie Oonark and another “First Generation” Qamani’tuaq artist, First Arts, 12 June 2023, Lot 36. Another of Oonark’s daughters, Nancy Pukingrnak Aupaluktuq, has also visited the story of Kiviuq in her imagery. See The Legend Of Kiviuq as Retold In The Drawings Of Nancy Pukirnak Aupaluktuq, (Gatineau, QC: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 2006). For other examples with spatial consistency images from the late 1950s / early 1960s, see Untitled (People and Animals), c. 1958-59, First Arts, December 2020, Lot 52 and Untitled (hunting birds at the stone trap), 1968 , illustrated in Marion E. Jackson, Baker Lake Inuit Drawings: A Study in the Evolution of Artistic Self-Consciousness, University of Michigan, PhD Dissertation, 1985, fig. 23.