Malup qalipagai

Something different today. 🙂 I’m really excited about sharing the art of Malu Lange, one of my pupils, now a young woman, from Uummannaq, Greenland. I’ve got permission from Malu to upload a selection of her paintings, and you can see more on her Facebook page.

If you’re wondering about the name of Malu’s page, then, with my trusty Greenlandic-Danish dictionary in hand, I can tell you that qalipagaq means painting, and, with a bit of generous translating, I might say that Malup qalipagai in English means Malu the Painter, or Malu the Artist, or Malu Paints, or something close to that. 😉

I started teaching Malu and her class when she was in 8th grade. I could tell some stories, but I won’t because this post is about Malu’s art. I knew Malu was painting, and had seen some of her work back when I was on Facebook a few years ago. Now I’ve fired up Facebook again, I can see that she’s been busy, and if you’re curious about her methods, you can see videos in Greenlandic on her Facebook page. I said no stories, but couldn’t resist the cheeky class photo from one of my English classes below. Yes, we painted a pirate island and played all kinds of language games, even talking like pirates.  Hmm… where’s that video?

I’m a sucker for Malu’s polar bear paintings, and the narwhal in the lead of open water swimming through the ice is fabulous!

But I’m guessing that Malu’s customers, family, and friends are probably most excited about her family portraits, and we’ll finish with one of those, a young family wearing traditional Greenlandic dress.

Don’t forget to find Malu on Facebook!

Chris

*P.S. There are some good things about Facebook after all. 😉