The long northern night

This hard black steatite carving of an Inuk (man) is the work of Barnabus Arnasungaaq who lives and carves in Baker Lake (Qamanittuaq), Nunavut Territory, Canada. I have tried to present the Inuk in the moonlight of the dark Northern winter.

Born in 1924 in the Kazan River area Barnabus is one of Baker Lake's oldest inhabitants where he and his work have been "an influence in his community and on the art of Keewatin for four decades." Carving programmes began in the community in the early 1960s with Barnabus, according to one observer, as a "major force and contributor to what clearly became the overall style of the tundra artists."