Provenance:

a Quebec private collection

Note:

Ever since the early 1960s Kenojuak drew various shapes of fronds, feathers and foliage to enhance her bird imagery, in particular her iconic images of owls. Owl’s Bouquet is one of a few Kenojuak images that incorporate flowers as well. Her overall design as well as Qavavau’s choice of colours and his sensitive stencil shading makes this a particularly festive version.

As is often the case with images by Kenojuak and other Cape Dorset artists, certain colour modifications took place in the translation from original drawing to finished print; these included colour gradations when it was decided to issue the print as a combination stonecut and stencil. Years later Owl’s Bouquet was chosen to be incorporated into the design for the Bank of Canada’s 2017 ten-dollar bill to commemorate Canada’s 150th Anniversary. Several members of Kenojuak’s family were present during the unveiling of the new design on April 7th, 2017. Forty million bills were issued.

Reference: for an image of the original drawing by Kenojuak as well as images of the Canada 150 commemorative Canadian ten-dollar bill using the print image see dorsetfinearts.com.