Kenojuak Ashevak
Along with the late Lucy Qinnuayuak and the late Pitseolak Ashoona, Kenojuak is recognized as being one of the foremost artists creating in the Cape Dorset tradition. Born in 1927, she has overcome a number of personal tragedies and setbacks in her life, including nearly four years of treatment for tuberculosis and the death of three children. She married at a young age to Johnniebo Ashevak and followed the customary Inuit lifestyle. In addition to drawing, Kenojuak and her husband also sculpted. They moved to Cape Dorset in 1966 to provide for their children’s schooling. Johnniebo died in 1972.

A contributor to the first Cape Dorset print collection in 1959 with her work, Rabbit Eating Seaweed, Kenojuak has been a regular participant in the collections since then. In the 30 years that Kenojuak has been an artist, 172 of her prints have been published in the annual Cape Dorset collections. Among her commissioned works is a ninety-six-foot mural which she completed with her late husband for the Canadian Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. Other commissions include a work for the 1977 World Wildlife Fund print portfolio.

She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1974, and in 1982 was appointed Companion to the Order of Canada. She received an Honorary Doctorate from Queen’s University in 1991 , and an Honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Toronto in 1992.

Lucy Qinnuayuak
Born in Northern Quebec in 1915, Lucy moved to Baffin Island as a child after her father’s death. Her mother later married Takata Meesa, and the couple brought Lucy to the camps of the Cape Dorset area. As a teenager Lucy married Tikitu Qinnuayuak in a group ceremony aboard the Hudson’s Bay Company supply ship, Nascopie. Lucy and her husband hunted and fished at various locations on the Foxe Peninsula, including Kangia, where in response to encouragement by James Houston she began in the 1950s to execute drawings for sale by the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative. The extra income was crucial for Lucy in 1961 when her husband became ill and required medical treatment in the South. After his recovery, the couple took up permanent residence in Cape Dorset. They raised a family of six children, two of whom were adopted.

Working mainly with graphite and coloured pencils, Lucy became known for her pictures of birds and Inuit women. Between 1961 and 1982, the year of her death, Lucy had works in each of the Cape Dorset print collections. One print was used in a 1972 UNICEF greeting card; another was used for the 1976 Summer Olympics banner. Her works have been exhibited in over eighty group and solo shows, and are now in many museums and private collections. With Kenojuak Ashevak and the late Pitseolak Ashoona, Lucy played an important part in the recognition that art from Cape Dorset has received.

Mayoreak Ashoona
Born in 1946, Mayoreak has maintained her roots in the traditional ways of the Inuit people. She and her husband, Qaqaq Ashoona, live in Shatureetuk, a remote site in South Baffin Island, with one of their sons and two grandsons. It is the same camp where Mayoreak was born. The couple moved there in the late 1970s after living more than 15 years in Cape Dorset. However, they do enjoy some contemporary amenities, including a house, a short-wave radio and traveling by snowmobile. Mayoreak’s mother, the late Sheouak Parr, was one of the first women to become involved in Cape Dorset printmaking in the 1950s. She taught Mayoreak skills for the preparation and storage of fish and game, as well as the curing of skins, and sewing.

Mayoreak is known for her drawings while Qaqaq is known for his sculptures. She has focused on birds, animals and day-to-day community activities, especially those involving women or groups. Qaqaq’s mother, Pitseolak, became one of Cape Dorset’s most widely-respected artists. Mayoreak began drawing in the 1960s, but produced work only irregularly because of family obligations. From 1978, she has been represented by 35 works in Cape Dorset print collections. Among the exhibitions in which she has been featured are Northern Exposure: Inuit Images of Travel  by the Burnaby Art Gallery; I Like My Hood To Be Full by the Winnipeg Art Gallery; and Return to the Birds by the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Napachie Pootoogook
Napachie is from a remarkable family whose talent follows a line of creativity that extends from her mother, Pitseolak Ashoona, to Napachie and four of her brothers. While Napachie has received accolades for her prints, her brothers Qaqaq, Komwartok, Kiugaaq and Ottokie have been acclaimed for their sculpture. Her husband, Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, was a print-maker at the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative.

With her mother, Napachie participated in the successful development of Cape Dorset art, helped by James Houston who provided them both with drawing paper. Napachie’s love of imagery and of recording various facets of Inuit life ensured sales through the Cape Dorset co-operative, and 40 of her prints have appeared in thirteen collections since 1960. Her works have been in a number of group presentations, among them: Images of the Inuit from the Simon Fraser Collection, Simon Fraser University, B.C.; Eskimo Games: Graphics and Sculpture, National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, Italy; and Art Inuit - la Sculpture des Esquimaux du Canada, Thenon, France and Liege, Belgium. Napachie is the mother of ten children and, with Qaunak Mikkigak, performs traditional Inuit throat singing.

Oopik Pitsiulak
Oopik has been experimenting with her art in recent years, diverging somewhat from her usual style. Born in September 1946, she is among later contributors to the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative. She grew up in settlements near Hudson’s Bay Company trading posts in Lake Harbour and Cape Dorset, rather than in fishing and hunting camps. The Company was important to her family. Her grandmother, Simatuq, her uncle, George Pitsiulak, and her father, Tommy Manning worked there. Oopik speaks of having two upbringings. The first was with her aunt and uncle, Nellie and George Pitsiulak, after her mother’s death. The second was with her father, Tommy Manning, who had married the daughter of successful carver, Peter Pitseolak. Oopik began producing her own works after joining others to help Pitseolak with his carvings. The mother of eight, her marriage dissolved in 1972.

Bilingual - English and Inuktitut – Oopik is aware of the culture of the rest of the country and its modern technological developments. Noted for their fine lines, her works are easily identifiable. Acknowledging the influence of her grandmother Simatuq’s beadwork, Oopik incorporates beads in her sculptures. Her work has been in such exhibitions as Eskimo Canada by the Canadian Guild of Crafts Quebec and La Federation des Cooperatives du Nouveau-Quebec and Cape Dorset - Selected Sculpture from the W.A.G. by the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Ovilu Tunnillie
Two childhood bouts of tuberculosis and treatment in Manitoba hospitals exposed Ovilu at an early age to the ways of the majority society – experiences which influenced her work in later years. Her first try at carving was as a teenager in 1966 using soapstone, after she observed her father, Toonoo, at work. He and other artists, including Ovilu’s grandmother, Kudjuakjuk, created their pieces at Igalalik and sold them through the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative at Cape Dorset. In 1969 she married Iola Tunnillie in Cape Dorset, where she had moved with her parents.

Her sculptures explore Inuit traditions and the impact change has had on them, as well as her personal view of these experiences. Ovilu is recognized for her novel approach and refined work. She has also turned her hand to jewelry, has cast in bronze, and in 1978-79, worked in the Cape Dorset printmaking studio. Among her shows are the solo exhibition, Oviloo Toonoo by the Canadian Guild of Crafts Quebec and group exhibitions such as New Inuit Art from the Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; and Hermitage-89: New Exhibits by the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. Ovilu was elected to the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in 1992 and is playing an increasing leadership role in representing Cape Dorset artists. She and her husband have a family of five children and care for one grandchild.

Pitaloosie Saila
One of the leading artists in Cape Dorset, Pitaloosie has had considerable exposure to other cultures. Born in 1942, as a child she spent seven years recuperating and undergoing rehabilitation in southern Canada after a serious spinal injury suffered in a fall. On her return to her parents’ camp in 1957 at the age of 15, she was no longer fluent in her first language, Inuktitut, though she had learned English and some French. Shortly after, she contributed her first drawings to the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, a relationship that eventually resulted in the production of 103 prints figuring in eighteen collections from 1968 on. Married to Pauta Saila, they travelled to Toronto in 1967 with their family, spending the summer there while Pauta participated in the International Sculpture Symposium.

Pitaloosie’s first, one-person show was held in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1974, and she has since travelled to major Canadian, American and European cities with her exhibitions. One of her prints, Fisherman’s Dream, was reproduced on a 12-cent postage stamp in 1977, and UNICEF chose Arctic Madonna for a 1983 greeting card. She has been a participant in many shows, including The Inuit Print / L’estampe Inuit organized by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of Civilization) and In the Shadow of the Sun: Contemporary Indian and Inuit Art in Canada by the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Pitseolak Ashoona
Pitseolak, who died in 1983, was one of the most prolific of the Inuit women artists. She was born in 1904 on Nottingham Island and spent her childhood moving with her family as they fished and hunted from camps near what are now lqaluit and Cape Dorset. As a teenager, she became the wife of a young hunter named Ashoona in an arranged marriage. Together they had 17 children, only five of whom survived. Widowed at a young age, Pitseolak was helped by her family and other hunters to provide for her children. In the 1950s she settled in Cape Dorset, where she was encouraged by James Houston of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative to take up drawing. Her works, rendered into prints, were well-received at the newly formed co-operative. In her lifetime she produced more than 7,000 lively interpretations of her culture.

Her works were published in the Cape Dorset print collection for the first time in 1960 and in each subsequent collection until her death twenty-three years later. Her internationally acclaimed prints have figured in over one hundred group and solo shows. Among her honours are election to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1974, a Canada Council Senior Arts Grant in 1975, and the Order of Canada in 1977. With Kenojuak Ashevak and the late Lucy Qinnuayuak, Pitseolak’s work helped spread the reputation of Cape Dorset art.

Qaunak Mikkigak
Born at Nuvujuak in 1932, Qaunak has childhood memories of carvings by her father Pitseolak and other men, who sold their works to the Hudson’s Bay Company. As a youngster Qaunak carved as well, making her one of the first Inuit women to take up the art. She has lived all of her life in the Cape Dorset area, though she travelled to camps in South Baffin Island as well. In Nuvujuak, she married Oqutaq Mikkigak, and the couple followed the traditional life of hunting and fishing. Qaunak and Oqutaq raised a family of eight, seven of them adopted. They eventually settled in Cape Dorset to provide for their children’s education. There, at the urging of James and Alma Houston, Qaunak took up carving and sewing to supplement the family’s income.

Although she has produced works in drawing, sewing and jewellery, Qaunak’s reputation has grown based on the quality of her sculptures. She has been represented in the annual Cape Dorset print collections for the years 1980, 1981 and 1986. Her works have also been in group exhibitions, such as Eskimo Sculpture Eskimo Prints and Paintings of Norval Morrisseau, Art Association of Newport, Rhode Island; Debut - Cape Dorset Jewellery, Canadian Guild of Crafts, Montreal; and Northern Exposure: Inuit Images of Travel, Burnaby Art Gallery, B.C. She is also known for her performances of Inuit throat singing.