A sculpture dating from quite early in the artist’s career, probably c. 1968-69, Female Figure is one of those works by Pangnark that seems viewable from two different positions: crouched forward, and upright. Perhaps Pangnark meant the woman to be kneeling, with her capacious hood billowing behind her. But the work is apparently signed on two different “facets,” and a co-op stock number is inscribed on the second “bottom,” which flips the woman onto her back, gazing directly up. Carved alternately with both crisp angularity and sensuous, soft curves, this little masterpiece is small enough to be held in the hand and enjoyed from any aspect, yet it possesses a distinct heft and fullness of form when displayed.

References: For a stylistically similar work see Mother and Child from 1969 in Darlene Coward Wight, The Jerry Twomey Collection, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2003), p. 96; see also Darlene Coward Wight, Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2012), cat. 25. For a similarly conceived contemporaneous Figure by Pangnark in the Sarick Collection at the AGO see Gerald McMaster, ed., Inuit Modern: The Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2010), p. 121.