Annie Pootoogook

After a long hiatus, one of Canada’s most important artists, the 2006 winner of the prestigious $50,000 Sobey Art Award, a star at the 2007 Documenta showcase in Germany, the subject of at least two documentaries, has resumed her art-making and is selling completed pencil-crayon drawings in Ottawa.

Unfortunately, the drawings are being sold by their creator, Baffin Island-born Annie Pootoogook, for reportedly as little as $25, $30 or $40 to passersby near a Shoppers Drug Mart on Rideau Street – a far cry from the $2,000 to $2,500 that veteran Toronto art dealer Patricia Feheley could command for Pootoogook’s best work as few as five years ago.