Gabriel Flowers

Gabriel Flowers is a self-taught artist from Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, NL, who works mainly with acrylic paint and stretched canvas, but has experimented with different mediums such as moose hide, beading and woodwork. 

Flowers began painting and drawing at the tender age of five. She looked forward to receiving a paint set every year for Christmas, when she would spend hours painting in her room. Her focus on painting and drawing continues to this day with artwork of scenic landscapes and wildlife inspired by her cabin trips with her grandparents to Snooks Point, just north of Rigolet.

In the last decade, Flowers’ paintings have been inspired by her Inuit culture. She feels painting and drawing is her strongest connection to keeping her culture alive. Flowers paints images of cleaning/splitting salmon, elders’ hands using an ulu and other examples of traditional Inuit subsistence methods. This is her way of bringing to life things she saw throughout her childhood and expressing her Inuit identity. 

Flowers began selling her paintings through social media in her early twenties, but put her artistry on a temporary hold for a few years when she returned to college. She restarted her practice in her thirties after participating in the 2021 Nunatsiavut Inuit Artist Auction. In 2022 Flowers was the recipient of the UNAAN Artist Grant, which is awarded annually to a single visual artist who wants to explore their heritage. Through this grant she will complete four paintings with the theme of Inuit culture for display on UNAAN’s website.