Artist Info
Pauta Saila
Pauta Saila was a sculptor and graphic artist from Kinngait (Cape Dorset), NU. Saila was born in 1916 at his father’s camp at Kilaparutua, near Kinngait. He had six siblings, however, only Saila and his sister, Sharni, who became a sculptor as well, survived to adulthood. Pauta Saila learned to live nomadically, hunt, and carve from his father, Saila, making implements and tools from ivory as a teenager. In 1937, Saila married Mukshowya who later died while giving birth to twins, the couple's fourth and fifth children. Saila moved to Kinngait after marrying his second wife, artist Pitaloosie Saila, in the early 1960s.
By 1962, Saila was contributing works to the Cape Dorset annual print collection. His graphic works evolved through the practice of new techniques, like using an axe to carve engraving plates. While skillful with his drawings, several of which were made into prints, Saila is perhaps best known for his “dancing bears,” powerful, somewhat abstract sculptures of upright polar bears. Using knowledge gained from living on the land with his father, Saila sculpted bears which expressed spiritual power and shamanistic flight through the 1970s and 80s. Saila produced one or two sculptures a year, eventually stopping the practice full-time in the late 1990s.
Saila’s work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally and he was elected into the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2003 alongside Pitaloosie. His works have not yet been featured at the ULAG.
