Pitaseolak Ashonna

(www.lessignets.com/.../1/kobiety_ashoona13.jpg)

Pitaseolak Ashoona in the one of Canada's best known artists. She was born on Baffin Island and is a well-known Inuit artist from Cape Dorset. She has produced more than 7,000 original works of art in her twenty-four-year artistic career. She has earned so many awards, including the Canada Council Senior Arts grant and the Order of Canada. Pitaseolak became a member a of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Ashoona is now gone- she died in 1983 leaving her northern art supplies behind and leaving us a wonderful joy of art.

How She Relates to me.....

Pitaseolak...her art inspires me by her art that she creates in her mind. Looking into her art it is different from the others. I draw people and do art sculptures, but Pitasoelak did paintings and drawings, which I would like to do as well.

Pitaseolak Ashoona Life

Pitaselako saw herself as a sea pigeon - wild and free - which is what her name means in Inuikitut (the Inuit language). She once said, "I know I have an unusual life, being born in a skin tent and living to hear on the radio that two men have landed on the moon."

Pitseolak Drawing with Two Girls on the Bed (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/images/pics/pootoogook2.jpg)

When Pitaseolak's husband died at Nettilling Lake, near Baffin Island, she took her 6 children to Cape Dorset. She was determined to provide for her children so began sewing and doing drawing for a paint studio. This is how she began her career as an artist. Her portfolio has thousands of drawings and over 200 are available as prints.

Pitaseolak was the one in the family to have a great talent, an artist's talent. When she got older she got married in 1922 and her husband and Ashoona's daughter, Napachie Pootoogook, also became artists. She spoke very well when she told her story in the illustrated oral biography Pitseolak: Pictures out of My Life (from recorded interviews by D. Eber, 1971), which became an NFB animated documentary.

Her artwork inspires me to be a better artist.