'I want to show people who I am and where I come from,' says Ame Papatsie

Ame Papatsie shares a laugh while working on a painting at the weekly Art Etc. gathering at First Baptist Church on Saturday. Tony Saxon/GuelphToday

1 / 1 Ame Papatsie shares a laugh while working on a painting at the weekly Art Etc. gathering at First Baptist Church on Saturday. Tony Saxon/GuelphToday

Ame Papatsie's art hangs in big city galleries, on the walls of fancy hotels, on commissioned medals for soccer championships and can be seen in a National Film Board short.

But today he's laughing about selling works for $5.

That's what a young boy recently offered for one of his original paintings, a swimming polar bear, at a local art show.

"What was I supposed to do? I couldn't say no," says Papatsie. "It was $50 but I sold it to him for $5. He was six or seven. It was so cute."

So the sale was made. So was another $5 sale to the boy's sister when she found out brother scored a "famous painting from a famous artist."

Papatsie may have lost a few dollars that day, but he couldn't have been happier.

Sharing art. Sharing stories and being around children mean more to Papatsie than the extra dollars the paintings should have brought in.

"All my life I've loved children. Children and elders," he says.

Papatsie, 54, is one of the unknown gems of Guelph's art scene.

He moved here four years ago to escape Toronto and find a community with a sense of family. A fellow artist recommended Guelph.

"I needed a small town that takes care of each other and is friendly. I love it here," he says. "People are friendly here, they say 'hi' to each other. They help each other."

Papatsie hails from Nunavut, specifically Pangnirtung, a small hamlet on Baffin Island that he still visits every summer.

It was there that his grandmother Kutlou taught him a love for art.

"When I was a boy my grandmother used to hang out with famous artists who came to Baffin Island to paint and that's where I learned English," Papatsie says.

His grandmother was the only artist who drew and painted in Pangnirtung. Others focused on knitting, carving and sewing.

"I was her interpreter, because she didn't speak English," he says. "I used to watch them paint all the time."

He says the McMichael Canadian Art Collection has many paintings of Baffin Island that show his relatives, including one of him and his grandmother.

Papatsie says his art is a way of expressing his culture and himself.

"It's my way of expressing what I cannot say. I don't use it to suppress, I use it to express," he says.

He says art has made him more confident and outgoing.

"I was very shy when I was young," says Paptatsie, whose Inuit name is Siqiniq.

Originally a trained chef, he eventually took up his art full time, teaching in elementary schools in western Canada.

"I realized I could share my culture better and in a stronger way by showing my art to people," he says of the switch from teaching 19 years ago. "I want to show people who I am and where I come from.

"By doing art I can show what the Inuit way is all about."

Sometimes that work of art takes two minutes and sometimes it takes 12 years, the longest he has ever worked on a piece.

"It needed the right kind of feeling and right kind of texture to give it to someone who I really care for," he says of that work.

While he has stacks of notebooks full of sketches and ideas, Papatsie says he rarely has a concrete idea in his head when he starts a project. He lets the work evolve.

"My technique of painting is really different than a lot of people," Papatsie says. "I don't plan when I'm painting. I just follow whatever the canvas wants to be. It changes all the time. I just listen to the canvas or the object."

He has lived in many places and his art resume includes everything from commisioned works to designing logos and medals for a soccer tournament. He has also created original soap stone carving chess sets.

One of his claims to fame is that he can paint simultaneously with both hands in perfect symmetry, which has earned him the nickname 'Ame-dextrous.'

He also edited a National Film Board short called Qalupapalik, an Inuit fable of a sea monster who steals children that didn't listen to their parents.

Every other week he sells paintings outside the Guelph Farmer's Market.

While he has a studio at his apartment, he prefers to be around his "friends and family."

You will find Papatsie being around that "family" at various locations, including painting with the kids at tthe weekly free Art Etc. event at First Baptist Church or at HOPE House, where he has earned the nickname 'The Baby Whisperer' for his willingness to hold and calm the babies of clients as they take a break from their mothering duties.

There are also plans to do some course teaching at the University of Guelph, possibly drum making.

"I have a studio at home but I'd rather work in other places around people where I feel comfortable.

"We work together and we take care of other people."