Ooloosie Saila
Ooloosie Saila is an emerging artist working out of Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Nunavut. She began to draw at a young age, and officially joined the Kinngait co-op in 2015. Saila is the granddaughter of talented sculptor and graphic artist Pauta Saila (1916-2009), and she was also inspired by renowned Kinngait graphic artist Kenojuak Ashevak.
Saila’s large scale drawings show a world of small nuanced details, from pencil strokes depicting the movement of water, to patterns that flatten the picture plane yet create a distinct impression of texture. In Ornamental Owl (2017), Saila’s bird sparks with a vibrant energy. Her all-encompassing pattern-making, with squiggles, stripes and dots, is distinctly her own. The vibrant stripes of the owl’s plumage are a visual marker of the artist’s emerging style.
Saila is gaining more recognition as she continues her artistic practice and has had several of her works translated into prints for the Dorset Fine Arts Annual Print collection. Her debut print, titled Owl (2017) was received with great acclaim and sold out quickly. Her artwork has been featured in exhibitions within Canada and internationally, and is also included in the collections at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal in Montreal, QC and Capital One in Toronto, ON. Saila was additionally featured in the Summer 2018 issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly, and enjoyed her first one person show at Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto the same year. She is a rising star whose future as an Inuit Artist of high accomplishment seems very bright.
