Caribou in Northern Lights

Pudlo Pudlat, RCA was an Inuit visual artist and printmaker born in 1916 at Ilupirssuk, a camp near Kamadjuak on the southern coast of Baffin Island, Northwest Territories (now Nunavut). Raised in a traditional semi-nomadic hunting family, he lived across various camps on the South Baffin coast before settling in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) in the late 1950s due to an injury that limited his physical activity.

At Kinngait, Pudlat was introduced to drawing and printmaking through the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative under the encouragement of James Houston. Working primarily with graphite, colored pencil, acrylic, and printmaking techniques such as stonecut and lithography, Pudlat became a prominent figure in the Cape Dorset graphic arts tradition. His work was featured in the annual Cape Dorset Print Collections starting in the early 1960s.

Pudlat's artistic practice is notable for capturing the transition from traditional nomadic life to modern settlement technology. His compositions frequently juxtaposed traditional Arctic wildlife and figures with modern mechanical objects, such as airplanes, helicopters, telephone poles, and heavy machinery, creating a unique visual document of cultural change in the North.

Throughout his career, Pudlat achieved significant institutional recognition. In 1978, he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA). In 1990, the National Gallery of Canada organized the retrospective exhibition Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing, marking the first time the national institution presented a solo retrospective for an Inuit artist.

Pudlat continued his studio practice in Kinngait until his death in December 1992. His artwork is represented in the permanent collections of major public and museum institutions across Canada and internationally, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and the Canadian Museum of History.