Ashoona, Pisteolak
1904 – 1983
Pisteolak Ashoona was a self-taught and prolific Inuit artist who produced over 9000 artworks during her life.
Her significance was recognised in 1974 when she was enrolled as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and three years alter she was awarded the Order of Canada.
Her artwork was mostly generated from her memories of Inuit ways of life, aspects of which were in decline or had already been lost completely by the time she made her pictures.
In 1970 she was assisted in collecting these memories into a book, 'Pictures Out Of My Life,' which remains one of the few biographies devoted to the thoughts and feelings of an Inuit artist.
She was married to an Inuit hunter, Ashoona, shortly after the death in 1922 of her father and bore him no fewer than seventeen children.
