Portraits of the Far North

Art by Gerald Kuehl, design by Dave Maddocks.

If portraits could speak, what fascinating stories would they tell? For over two decades, Manitoban artist Gerald Kuehl has travelled to the far-fl ung corners of Canada to draw out these answers from the last generation of Indigenous Peoples born on the land, and, pencil in hand, to record their likenesses and experiences. Picking up where Kuehl’s acclaimed Portraits of the North left off , Portraits of the Far North follows the artist as he crosses the 60th parallel into Nunavut to meet the few Inuit Elders who still remember the days when their people lived entirely off the bounty of the land. Kuehl’s astonishing graphite pencil drawings and accompanying stories—the result of his travels in the Far North over thirteen years, hundreds of interviews with Elders, and thousands of hours at the drawing board—provide an unprecedented, poignant account of the changing realities Inuit experienced over the course of the last century, and their bright hopes for the future.