This print, based on one of Luke Anguhadluq’s earliest drawings, carries a title that misleads. It was originally called Boy, likely because the figure appears so childlike: its posture unsteady, its expression open, its body filled with a kind of awkward charm. But in a 1970 interview with Jack Butler, Anguhadluq offered a very different interpretation. The figure, he explained, is not a child at all, but a giant. An “almost human" [1]. Knowing this does not diminish the work’s appeal. If anything, it deepens it. There is something wonderfully unexpected about realizing this friendly, wobbly figure is not a boy at play, but a giant in motion. It turns the drawing into a kind of fable, one where scale and species matter less than personality. The delight, it turns out, is not in what the figure is, but in how it moves through the world.

1. See Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1993), p. 17. The original drawing is illustrated on p. 18.

Reference: Anguhadluq’s original drawing is illustrated in Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1993), fig. 1, p. 18. For additional reading on the artist and illustrations of his work see: Jean Blodgett, "Luke Anguhadluq," in Tuu'luq / Anguhadluq: An exhibition of works by Marion Tuu'luq and Luke Anguhadluq of Baker Lake, (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1976); Charles H. Moore, "Anguhadluq's art: Memories of the Utkuhikhalingmiut" in Études/Inuit/Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Université Laval, 1978), pp. 3-21; Ingo Hessel, Inuit Art: An Introduction, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / New York: Harry Abrams / London: British Museum Press, 1998), fig. 121; and Gerald McMaster, ed., Inuit Modern: The Samuel and Esther Sarick Collection, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2010), pp. 103, 168-169.