Long before her 1970 ‘debut’ in Baker Lake’s print catalogue, Jessie Oonark began drawing in 1958 or early 1959, [1] and was quickly encouraged by biologist Dr. Andrew Macpherson and later Edith Dodds. Three early works, credited somewhat imprecisely to “Una, Kazan River,” appeared in Cape Dorset’s 1960 and 1961 collections, the only non-local images published by the West Baffin Co-op.

Inland Eskimo Woman, along with these other early works, is more than simply a striking graphic experiment, it is a true harbinger of what was to come for Oonark’s art: a sustained, intentional focus on the centrality of women in Inuit life, and a love of design and pattern. Foreshadowing the feminine presence that would come to define much of her work, the woman here is elongated and stylized. She is less a portrait than a symbol. Reduced to stark black lines against an unadorned ground, the image’s elegance lies in the precision of its restraint. Verging on abstraction with its vertical orientation and dramatically attenuated form, the female figure emphasizes stature and presence over realism. [2]

1. Oonark began drawing of her own volition; see her very first drawing in First Arts, 1 Dec. 2020, Lot 52.

2. Oonark’s original graphite sketch (one of several on a single sheet) is illustrated in Darlene Coward Wight and Jocelyn Piirainen, Inuit Sanaugangit: Art Across Time, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2023), cat. 285, p. 183.

References: This image has been fairly widely published, including in Bernadette Driscoll, The Inuit Amautik: I Like My Hood To Be Full (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1980) cat. 89. For a later drawing by Oonark, Eskimo Family c. 1968-69, which depicts a similarly posed woman, see the National Museum of Man travelling exhibition catalogue Oonark-Pangnark (Ottawa: NMM, 1970) cat. 20.