Germaine Arnaktauyok was born near Igloolik on the Northwest Coast of Baffin Island in what is now part of Nunavut in 1946 to Isidore Iytok and Therese Natteq (there are sculptures by her mother in the Winnipeg Art Gallery collection).

She remembers her early years on the land with her parents and seven siblings as a happy time, and recalls drawing on gum wrappers and any bits of paper she could find. At the age of nine, she was sent to a residential boarding school in Chesterfield Inlet, Northwest Territories, run by the Roman Catholic Church. This was a lonely and difficult time, as she was only able to see her family during summer holidays. There she met a nun who was a talented painter. She and three other girls were able to spend Saturday mornings painting, listening to music, and eating candieswelcome periods of freedom from life at the school.

By the time she sold her first painting at the age of 11, art was an integral part of her life. While at high school in Churchill, Manitoba, she met George Swinton who encouraged her to attend the University of Manitoba School of Art, which she did from 1969-1970. After a year at Algonquin College in Ottawa, she decided that commercial design held little interest for her. Her first commissions for book illustration came at that time.

She moved to Iqaluit for five years, and then to Yellowknife, where she continued to support herself with book illustrations. While in Yellowknife, Arnaktauyok married and gave birth to a daughter. In 1990 she began to devote herself to artmaking in a serious way. She studied printmaking in Iqaluit and Montreal in 1992, and has created a number of etchings in recent years. This technique translates well to Arnaktauyoks very intricate, linear style of drawing. She finds etching techniques exciting because "the acid has a personality of its own, and things sometimes come out slightly different from what you expected."

Germaine's honors include a seven-month solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (1998) and most recently, the selection by the Royal Canadian Mint of two of her designs for use on Canadian coins. This includes her image "Drummer" as the reverse design for the 1999 Cdn $2 coin celebrating the creation of the Territory of Nunavut.

for Germaine Arnaktauyok

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