Ruth Annaqtuusi Tulurialik

Background

Ruth Annaqtuusi Tulurialik was born on September 13, 1934, in a traditional Inuit camp along the Kazan River area of the Northwest Territories, now Nunavut. As an infant, she was adopted by her aunt and uncle, Elisapee Unuqnuq and Thomas Tapatai, and was raised on Baker Lake.

Career

Having worked several years as an interpreter for the nursing station, child care worker, and cook, Ruth Annaqtuusi Tulurialik became very interested in the arts and crafts projects that were introduced in her community during the 1960s under the auspices of the Canadian federal government. She first tried her hand at wool duffel wall-hangings but has become better known for her strongly gestural drawings and the stone-cut and stencil prints based on her drawings.

Ruth began drawing in the middle of the 1960s under the guidance of Jessie Oonark. Her drawings usually depict everyday life scenes on the land and subjects taken from her vast knowledge of traditional stories and legends.

Ruth draws inspiration for her art from the traditional ways of her Inuit culture, filling her compositions with extremely imaginative depictions of Arctic animals, Inuit in traditional dress, women with facial tattoos, shamans and spirits, fantastic birds and fish, and transformational images.

Her drawings usually in colored pencil are highly-complex in an organization and frequently fill the entire page with color. She characteristically overlays one hue over another to create complex and textured skeins of color and often extends the background nearly to the edge of the page, creating a narrow border that she leaves blank to frame her drawings. The figures in Ruth’s drawings are firmly outlined and filled with color, and she makes occasional use of “voice balloons” to indicate sounds or words expressed by the highly active humans, animals, and spirits that occupy the vibrant world she creates.

Sixteen of Ruth's drawings the basis for prints produced through the annual Baker Lake print collections. Her work is represented in the Baker Lake print collections for the years 1971-1973, 1975, 1977, 1980, and 1983-1987. With the tance of a Canada Council Explorations grant in 1984, Ruth Annaqtuusi Tulurialik and David Pelly collaborated to produce a collection of stories to accompany a selection of her original drawings; this collection was published under the title Qikaaluktut-Images of Inuit Life by Oxford University Press in 1986. That same year a major solo exhibition of forty-two of Ruth’s drawings, “The Vital Vision: Drawing by Ruth Annaqtuusi Tulurialik,” was organized and circulated by the Windsor Gallery of Art, Ontario.

Achievements

• Ruth Annaqtuusi Tulurialik’s highly-esteemed drawings, prints, and wall-hangings have been widely exhibited in group exhibitions and are held in such important public collections as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the government of the Northwest Territories; Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph; McMichael Collection. Her work is represented in private and public permanent collections, such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Phillips Memorial Gallery both in Washington, District of Columbia; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Delgado Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana; Houston Art Museum, Texas; Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Arts Club - both in New York City; Newark Art Museum, New Jersey; Norfolk Museum, Virginia and others.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Qikaaluktut: Images of Inuit Life 1986
  • The Vital Vision: Drawings by Ruth Annaqtuusi 1986

• painting

  • Shaman Family

    1986

  • Marble Island

    1995

  • Marble Island

    1980

  • Old Lady

  • Simon Tookoome

  • Fishing in the Moonlight

    1996

  • Fish Spirits Riding on Kayaks

    1974

  • Legend of the Sea Spirit

  • Shaman

  • Shaman Family

    1986

  • Untitled

  • Out In The Land

    1977

  • A Face Like The Sun

    1971

  • The Flood

    1972

  • Travelling By Starlight

  • The Tundra With River

    1973

  • Two Men Carrying a Woman

  • The Minister

    1986

  • Shaman; Contacting Spirits

    1970

  • We Lived By Animals

    1975

  • Shaman Fighting Spirits

    1977

  • Mythological Scene

    1971

  • Untitled (people totem)

  • Untitled (camp scene with pipe)

  • Fishing

  • Spring Camp

    1985

  • Hungry Kudlooputlooalook

    1985

  • Loving Family

    1984

  • Happy Hearts

    1983

  • Dog Teams Arrival

    1996

Membership

• New York Watercolor Society , United States

• National Association of Portrait Painters , United States

• 

  National Arts Club , United States

• 

  American Federation of Arts , United States

• 

  American Artists Professional League , United States

• Southern States Art League , United States

Connections

Ruth Annaqtuusi Tulurialik is married to Hugh Tulurialik, who operates an outfitting business in Baker Lake. They have three children: Barbara Qulaut, Marianne Paunngat and Casey Unumiq.

Mother:

Martha Talerook

foster father:

Thomas Tapatai

foster mother:

Elizabeth Tapatai

husband:

Hugh Tulurialik

Daughter:

Barbara Qulau

Daughter:

Marianne Paunngat

Son:

Casey Unumiq

colleague:

Jessie Oonark

Jessie Oonark is one of the most iconic Inuit artists of the twentieth century. Her strong, bold and colorful compositions that have delighted generations found their expression in various media, including drawings, prints and wall hangings.

colleague:

David Pelly

David Pelly is a modern-day explorer of the North's cultural landscape, who has lived in and traveled to the Arctic since the late 1970s.