WCA is proud to present a special Exhibition Teaser
Scroll down for a sneak peak at a selection of talented artists whose work will be exhibited at our gallery in the upcoming 2021 season
Andrea Gorda
Residing in Inglis, MB, Andrea Gorda began photographing local community events and people. Her art practice has developed from that photography and also from creating textile goods with botanical dyes and blockprinting.
Approaching her practice primarily from a photographic experience, Andrea earnestly delved into acrylics in late 2018. There, she found a medium that was accessible, and started by painting the subject matter of choice from her youth, horses.
This ongoing series of acrylic paintings is part of a larger, ongoing project to document individuals within landscapes. Choosing pasture riders and ranchers as a main subject as they are both a recognizable icon, an increasingly isolated and maligned demographic and as a central point of conversation in land management as determined by climate change, Andrea has travelled through western Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan. Her photographs strive to bring the intricacies of the soil, plant and animal community dynamics forward, by highlighting existing management strategies, primarily within the community pasture network. Andrea was raised within the rural urban interface of small acreages and chooses to approach the subject matter as an outsider, attempting to keep an outsiders viewpoint to better engage others in conversation about how our individual choices affect community and land health. She questions the value of maintaining and/or increasing individuality at the cost of community and land health.
Her painting works explore the simultaneous nature of herd and the individual organism. Motivated by the land we live on and depend on, and the need for a settling into that connection, Andrea Gorda explores the idea of connection to group, an underlying dependency on each other, the thought of being part of a collective while expressing individual direction.
Her paintings seeks to express isolation within a larger whole and how separateness and disconnection to grounding foundation of community and land can be startling and questionable for the benefit of the whole. She plays with and questions the idea of individuality, the disconnect between urban and rural Manitoba. She acknowledges the patronizing attitudes that can arise across the breadth of this spectrum and their impacts on land and land health She proposes embracing integration between individuals, between individuals and communities and both individuals, communities and the land.
Aaron Vanbeselaere
Aaron Vanbeselaere started welding scrap metal sculptures at the age of 12 when his mother saw a metal stork in a garden magazine and asked his dad if he could make one. His brother dad and he, trying to figure this out unsuccessfully led to him making a frog out of cultivator shovels. things snowballed from that point on.
Vanbeselaere has created and sold many different sculptures out of scrapped farm materials over Manitoba and Saskatchewan from then on purely for the enjoyment in creating them.
Vanbeselaere’s current practice includes a series of sculptures based on endangered species due to current ecological issues like the fringed orchids and the near complete destruction in prairie grassland habitats due to past and current changes in farming practices and how conservation and agriculture should work together for the good of both. Building a fringed orchid out of tillage implements may be symbolic of that struggle.
Barbara Kaminsky
In the spring of 2019 Barbara Kaminsky took an art workshop in Mexico that moved her to create this body of painting that entitled “Paint with the Heart”. The work involves painting in a loose and textured style. It starts with building up the canvas with mediums, modelling paste and other interesting items such as tissue paper, sand, twigs, burlap, etc. Then I paint with large brushes, moving the paint around with rags or hands, sometimes removing paint and sometimes adding water to have it drip down in an interesting way.
Instead of starting with a reference picture that I usually would do, Kaminsky puts the music on and starts painting with large brush strokes, letting the beat move and inspire her. Sometimes a scene can be identified and sometimes it is just an abstract work. It is a very free and joyous experience. Kaminsky hopes the people looking at her body of work can find a similar joy.
Anne Klassen
Whether it’s a bald eagle soaring through the blue sky, a wold running across a frozen snow-wovered lake, or three tiny black bear cubs scrambling up a tree, the breathtaking photo opportunities of Riding Mountain National Park are second to none. Anne Klassen’s passion lies in tracking down different forms of wildlife for the perfect photo opportunity.
Twenty years ago, Klassen got into photography as a hobby. Klassen stops in to Riding Mountain year round, visiting her favourite remote locations. One may often find the photographer dressed in camouflage and sitting in a blind for hours on end, or tracking subjects much like a hunter, although the only shooting going on is through the lens of a camera.
Klassen feels that wildlife protection is essential, because once the animal is gone, it will be impossible to study and learn from them. Unfortunately, a lot of wildlife has disappeared from the earth do to human activities. Klassen feels it is her duty to make others aware of this, expressing her point of view through breathtaking photographs.
“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”
-Jane Goodall.
Susan Selby
Susan Selby has lived most of her life in Manitoba and draws inspiration from local landscapes, often using her own photographs to find the creative spark. Selby has learned to work with all kinds of fabric in unique ways and loves to immerse it in dye, brush it with paint , draw on it, print on it, rip it, cut it up and stitch, stitch, stitch it with the artist’s sewing machine.
An Interview with the artist:
Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get started as an artist?
I have always loved textiles and began sewing and creating with fabric as a child. The textures, patterns and colours of the quilts in my family appealed to me and I began making traditional quilts as an adult. From there, it was an easy transition into fibre art.
What do you think viewers should know that gives important insight into your work/ artist practice?
The Canadian Prairies are under appreciated as a landscape. Our scenery beautiful, inspiring and I love to bring it alive with fibre. I view my work as art and fibre is simply my means of creating that art.
What is the current direction of your artistic practice? What themes, ideas, techniques, or mediums are you interested in exploring.
I would like to grow beyond “How did she do that?” and into “What a wonderful work of art!” Fibre artists are very concerned with technique and are often looking for the next class to learn something new. I would like to be comfortable with my techniques and focus on the creation of art.
What do you hope visitors will take away from viewing your artwork?
I hope viewers will find an appreciation of our prairie landscape in all its seasons, even winter.
Ivan Wasylyshen
Ivan Wasylyshen’s inspiration began several years ago with a simple, natural edge aspen bowl purchased at a Montreal gallery. Shortly afterwards when Wasylyshen expressed interest in woodturning, his wife bought him a lathe for his 50th birthday. He soon began experimenting with several varieties of wood including maples, walnut, oak, koa, cherry and purple heart. Ivan is currently implementing inlays using metal powders such as copper, nickel and brass, as well as paints and dyes. As a means of creative expression, Wasylyshen finds the art of woodturning very rewarding and satisfying.
Yvonne Kipling
I still remember the first time I realized how much I loved photography, and that it had to be a huge part of my life. In the summer of 2010, we were camping in Duck Mountain Provincial Park, Manitoba, and I saw the most amazing fire red sunset peaking through the trees just off the lake. I had my husband pull over to so I could grab a picture of it. I got it and it was awesome. I have been hooked ever since.
I feel fortunate that I had that experience. Some people spend their whole life looking for that hobby, job, or anything really, that helps feed their soul. Photography is my soul food. The feeling I get when I sit just outside Winnipeg in my car for two hours just waiting for that eagle to land in her nest, or watching her soar above the fields for hours looking to catch something to eat, is really amazing. It gives me a sense of excitement and adventure like nothing else. When I have a vision of the picture I am waiting for and then I capture it, wow is that an awesome feeling. I feel grateful and in awe of the beauty we have right here in Manitoba.
Living in Manitoba has allowed me to capture some of my most exhilarating and special photos that I have gotten to date. While photographing other parts of the world is something I enjoy, there is something truly amazing about stepping out into your backyard and getting a picture that people will know was taken in Manitoba, and may remind them of home. I have been very lucky to shoot all my photos on a Canon camera with a variety of lenses, with a wide angle lens being my favourite. You can capture so much more of the scene with a wide angle lens. My goals for photography are to photograph the Northern lights in Churchill and the wildlife of Yellowstone National Park. One day I hope to photograph the elephants in Amboseli National Park in Kenya and travel by train through the Rocky Mountains.
I want to wake up each day, decide where I feel like going that day, and go take pictures. I want to give back to local charities through the sale of my prints, and I want to always evoke emotion when people look at my work. You should never just look at a picture. You should feel it. Photography isn’t just my hobby, or a way to make money, it’s my life passion.
Naomi Gerrard
For a number of years Naomi has been exploring the energy of the prairies while celebrating the importance of our prairie agriculture. She is inspired by the potential surging life of the individual grains planted annually in our prairies which change the vast prairie landscape annually from the planting season to the harvest season. They spread energy, hope and beauty as they develop into nourishing food for us all. Each individual grain has its own inherent personality, range of colours, shape and beauty. She incorporates these grains in her mixed media art works using about 18 different grains that are grown in our prairies. She feels a connection to our prairies through these grains as she develops compositions depicting the planting, sprouting, maturing and harvesting of the grains as well as showing products created from these grains and animals enjoying the gains. The energy of the grains as they mature inspires her more abstract compositions. These grains command a deep respect and encourage a reflection on life, nature and our connections to the land. The health of our agriculture is vitally linked to the health of society.
Mona Maxfield
”My paintings are a ritual, a meditation on memory, nostalgia, connection to place, family. They are a visceral act of creation, an undeniable force in my life. Through the creation of this body of work I am able to make manifest the places where my heart resides.”
Mona Maxfield is an interdisciplinary artist, born and raised in Winnipeg, MB. She spent her summers in the Whiteshell, and this would go on to inspire much of her work. She lives in Winnipeg with her husband and two daughters and spends her summers in Lake of the Woods.
Mona started sculpting when her children were young and would go on to create sculpted portraits of the people she knew and loved. More recently she has turned her hand to painting with acrylics, and has truly thrown herself into this work.
Ron Lintott
Ron Lintott was born in the Sidney/Carberry area in the early 1950’s and has spent all his life in the general area. His education was also received in that area. The artist’s work life has been in the agricultural field-livestock, grain and potatoes. Lintott has always been able to draw and over the years have dabbled in pencil, pen & ink, oils, acrylics and even tried his hand at silversmithing.
In 2017 he purchased an old woodturning lathe and tried his hand at turning bowls, platters, pots, etc. Within a couple of hours he was hooked and hasn’t stopped turning since then. By the end of 2018 all his family members and most of his friends and neighbours had been given wooden vessels of some description. About this time, Lintott started to attend an occasional local craft sale to see if there would be any approval from people he didn’t know. He was quite surprised at how well received his turnings were. Up until this time, he had been turning small articles from pieces of wood given to him by neighbours and friends. Then he discovered the vast amount of wood available in old buildings, local hedgerows, fencelines and in the local forested areas. From these sources he made small plates and containers fom barn timbers and chunks of pallets, rolling pins from old fence posts, etc. Then he started venturing into larger turnings from tree roots, stumps and dead trees, all found within a ¼ mile around his house. Lintott was amazed at the beauty within some of this old found wood. There is a terrific sense of accomplishment in finding a chunk of old dead maple in the hills and being able to turn it into a piece of art. To see the delicate beauty of the grain in the wood and consider the rugged life and age of the tree it came from can make a person pause and consider the definition of beauty.
Most of the turnings Lintott does now are fairly large, in the 10 to 20 inch diameter range. All are still turned from recycled, re-used, repurposed wood. Most are live edge with bark inclusions, cracks and insect holes left intact, as long as it doesn’t affect the integrity of the piece to include them. What the artist attempts to do with his turnings is express to viewers the delicate beauty that can be found within the rugged strength of a tree. It is very satisfying to have someone pick up a turning and really look at it closely and ask even one question about what type of wood or where it came from.
”I hope my turnings affords the opportunity for someone to gain a bit different attitude about the wood we dispose of. The current pandemic has been a trial for all of us in numerous ways. Personally, other than getting accustomed to personal distancing when I leave home, I haven’t been affected much. Most of what I enjoy in life is right at home. I’ve been able to spend a bit more time in my shop and push my skill level a bit more.”
