Pitaloosie Saila RCA

Cape Dorset

Pitaloosie Saila was born in 1942 in Cape Dorset. Saila began to draw in the early 1960s and immediately developed a personal style.

She has participated in an annual engraving collection in Cape Dorset since 1968. However, she began to draw completely on her own initiative in the early 1960s during the time that James Houston was at Cape Dorset, and her style is distinctively her own. She tends towards images of strong, nurturing women or women and children, and frequently draws birds and mythical Taleelayu or Sedna figures as well.

Pitaloosie Saila has had numerous opportunities to travel in southern Canada and abroad in connection with her art. With Pauta Saila, she spent the summer of 1967 in Toronto with their family while Pauta executed a carving for the International Sculpture Symposium. In 1974, Pitaloosie attend the opening of her first solo exhibition in Hamilton, and subsequent showings of her work have taken her to major cities in southern Canada, the United States and Europe.