Parr was an Inuit art

Inuit art

Inuit art refers to artwork produced by Inuit people, that is, the people of the Arctic previously known as Eskimos, a term that is now often considered offensive outside Alaska...

ist who lived a traditional Inuit

Inuit

The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...

 lifestyle until 1961, when he settled in Cape Dorset because of declining health and a hunting accident.

There he began to draw and make stonecut relief print

Relief print

A relief print is an image created by a printmaking process where protruding surface faces of the matrix are inked; recessed areas are ink free. Printing the image is therefore a relatively simple matter of inking the face of the matrix and bringing it in firm contact with the paper...

s, creating over 2000 works in the next eight years. These are mainly images of hunting scenes, although Shamanic subjects

Shamanism among Eskimo peoples

Shamanism among Eskimo peoples refers to those aspects of the various Eskimo cultures that are related to the shamans’ role as a mediator between people and spirits, souls, and mythological beings...

 are also depicted. These works are now in many international collections, including the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

. In 1977 one of his prints was featured on a Canadian postage stamp.

His sons Nuna Parr and Peter Parr are also artists.

External links

• Timeline of works in the database of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art