Annie Pootoogook, MY GRANDMOTHER, PITSEOLAK, DRAWING, 2003, Coloured pencil & ink, 20 x 19 1/2 in.

Feheley Fine Arts is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of works on paper by Annie Pootoogook. Born in 1969, Annie is an emerging artist who only began drawing in 1997. She is inspired by the detailed graphics of her uncle, Kananginak Pootoogook, and remembers fondly her grandmother, Pitseolak Ashoona. Her mother, Napachie Pootoogook, was another strong artistic influence, yet Annie’s work is distinct both from her relatives and from her artistic peers in Cape Dorset.

Annie is aware of the southern audience for her drawings, but her work challenges conventional expectations about the look or feel of ‘Inuit’ art. Her subjects are not Arctic animals or scenes of nomadic existence from a time before settlement life; rather, her images reflect her experiences as a female artist living and working in contemporary Canada, albeit the far north. Amongst details of Inuit home interiors, meticulous descriptions of modern outpost camp life and scenes peopled by local Cape Dorset personalities, Annie’s drawings are peppered with images of ATM cash machines, Playboy-style eroticism, the social services office, spousal abuse and the Iraqi war on television.

These diverse references shape the new northern reality and are as much part of the fabric of Annie’s world as the dog sleds and skin clothing of Pitseolak’s drawings were part of Artic life in the mid-twentieth century. As social change rolls forward in the Arctic, Annie – like her grandmother before her – is an instinctive chronicler of her times. Annie’s meticulous attention to detail extends to the practice of incorporating clocks and calendars in her compositions to indicate appropriate times of the day and year for each event depicted.

Annie approaches each fresh sheet of paper systematically, drawing her outlines in graphite before working up details in black ink; colour comes last. Her current drawings employ advanced shading to render forms more solidly in space. Generally, Annie works at home, except recently when she joined a group of artists in the Cape Dorset lithography studio. Concurrent with this inaugural exhibition of her works on paper, we are proud to release Annie’s first print; an etching and aquatint titled Interior and Exterior. The image, a memory of the artist’s childhood, loving records the particulars of settlement life in Cape Dorset. The print is an example of this emerging artist ‘moving forward’ to embrace new media options as her artistic development continues.

Drawing provides Annie with an outlet for emotion – whether she feels mournful, confident, irate or mischievous. The artist describes herself as spiritual but not overtly religious. Nevertheless, the recent death of her mother has led Annie to create soul-searching drawings in which rays of light envelope figures attended by the hand of God. Still unable to talk about her mother’s passing earlier this year, Annie pours her feelings into drawings and these works speak volumes for her.