Pudlo Pudlat delighted in taking familiar Arctic subjects and nudging them into the improbable. In Proud Bearer, a massive muskox bears an elaborately dressed figure whose arms shoot skyward in a gesture of exuberant display. The animal is no less fantastic. Its broad, black, shaggy body belongs unmistakably to the muskox, but from its head springs a great branching set of antlers more suggestive of caribou than muskox. Weight and whimsy meet in the pairing. The animal seems solid and earthbound, the rider buoyant and theatrical, while the extravagant antlers push the whole scene further into fantasy. Such playful substitutions are characteristic of Pudlo, who could seize upon the familiar, stretch it, scramble it, and make it strange.