Mother and Child in Front of Bear Hide Drawing

A smiling mother carries her child in an amauti - a parka with a built-in pouch under the hood on the back, designed to cradle a baby - as they stand in front of a polar bear hide.

1995/00
Coloured pencil, ink
66.3 x 50.7 cm
Registration no. 032-5601

ᓇᐸᓯ Napachie Pootoogook (1938-2002)

Born at Sako, a traditional Inuit camp on the Southwest coast of Baffin Island, Northwest Territories, Napachie Pootoogook is the daughter of one of Inuit art’s most important figures, Pitseolak Ashoona.  Along with her sculptor brothers, [Namoonai, Koomwartok, Ottochie], Kiawak and Kaka Ashoona and her graphic artist sisters-in-law, Mayureak and Sorosiluto Ashoona, Napatchie belongs to a family with a strong artistic identity that has contributed significantly to the reputation of Cape Dorset art and the printmaking studio of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative. 

In the mid-1950’s while living at Kiaktuuq, she married Eegyvukluk Pootoogook (b. 1931), son of the important camp leader, Pootoogook, who has since become of the main printers at the Cape Dorset studio.  Like her mother, Napachie began drawing in the late 1950’s.  Since 1960 her work has been included in almost every annual collection of Cape Dorset prints.  Napatchie and her husband moved into Cape Dorset in 1965, where they have continued to live, except for a two-year stay in Iqaluit in the early 1970’s.