join its Graphics Division. She worked first with the Information Display department, designing posters, publications, and travelling displays for National Film Board projects. She moved to the NFB's Animation Department when the Graphics Division was disbanded and produced her first film, Folksong Fantasy (shown at the 1951 Edinburgh International Film Festival) while under contract with the NFB as an independent producer. In 1951, Alma Duncan and her longtime partner, photographer Audrey McLaren, formed the film company Dunclaren Productions. Their first film, Kumak the Sleepy Hunter (1953) was a retelling of an Inuit legend using puppets and a stop-motion animation technique. It was nominated for a BAFTA award in 1954 as a documentary film. They produced two other films, Hearts and Soles (1955), which used the same animation techniques as Kumak, and Friendly Interchange (1959), which was made with chalk drawings. Though the production company never disbanded, it became inactive after 1960. Duncan retired from animated filmmaking in 1960 to allow herself to concentrate on her drawings and paintings, which became increasingly abstract despite taking inspiration from her natural surroundings. Mid-career Duncan began experimenting with abstraction in the 1960s, with her Woman Series which deconstructed the female figure through circular forms. Works from this series appeared in the exhibition Canadian Water Colours, Drawings and Prints 1966 at the National Gallery of Canada and then circulated across Canada, as well as appearing in international exhibitions and collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Canada Council Art Bank, and Museum London. Her work coincided with and reflects the sexual liberation of second wave feminism, though she did not explicitly identify as a feminist at the time. Duncan's earlier painting Self-Portrait (1943) also embodies a feminist outlook, according to art historian Jaclyn Meloche, as her depiction of herself as a young and confident working artist defied prevailing gender norms. Duncan produced her "dot" series of pen-and-ink drawings of celestial bodies using simple circular forms the same year as her Woman Series. In 1966, amid her exploration of abstraction, Duncan joined the Canadian Society of Graphic Arts. Duncan was particularly fascinated by the works of Painters Eleven as well as the Abstract Expressionists, both influencing her abstract works, seen in her 1967 series of paintings expressing pure colour and form. Canada Post In 1970, Canada Post commissioned Alma Duncan to design stamps. She produced the series Maple Leaf in Four Seasons (released in 1971) and