Brenda Hedberg, Patricia Johnson, Peggy Kasuba, and Wanda Slawik bring colourful fall fun to the gallery this month
The Gwen Fox Gallery is welcoming some well-known local artists to this month’s exhibit.
Brenda Hedberg, Patricia Johnson, Peggy Kasuba, and Wanda Slawik will feature their art in a show called, September Magic. The show runs from Sept. 3 to the 28 and residents wanting to meet the talented local group can check out their artist’s reception that will take place on Sept. 7 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Brenda Hedberg
Hedberg is a Selkirk artist who paints vibrant acrylic paintings often involving nature and her surroundings. She describes her artistic style as loose realism.
“The people who’ve influenced me the most were my teacher in Teulon, because he’s been my only teacher, Graham Clarke, he’s a fabulous teacher and he’s now retired, and Monet. I fell in love with Monet’s paintings,” said Hedberg.
Hedberg wasn’t always an artist but taking a drawing class in 2012 at the Green Acres Art Centre in Teulon sparked her creativity.
Being a resident in the Teulon area before recently moving to Selkirk meant that she is strongly inspired by our local area. Residents will likely recognise her clothesline paintings as well as those involving marshy areas and plant life in ditches but she’s also been inspired by florals which bring some pops of colour to this month’s exhibit.
“Where I lived in the country there were so many flowers, I still paint from those photos. [I used to have] have bouquets everywhere in the house,” she explained.
You’ll also see some of her landscapes in this month’s exhibit.
“It’s what I love. I love the big skies. Oh my goodness, we have skies, and we have open prairie, we have we have horizon,” she said.
She’s been a member of the Gwen Fox Gallery for ten years and encourages residents to stop by.
“You’ll never see anything like Peggy’s installations. They’re just magical, for sure. There’s nothing like it anywhere else because they come out of her own creativity and her own brain… and the other three of us, everything just goes so nicely together. There’s a lot of new art here. Wanda has a lot of new pieces, and so does [Patricia],” said Hedberg.
Patricia Johnson
Johnson is a very talented artist who takes the idea of multi-media art to new heights. This month’s exhibit showcases her talent at collage, carving, beadwork and also the use of watercolour paints in many marvellous ways.
“[In this exhibit] I have a new carving of an iris. I have paintings of Northern Lights over Lake Winnipeg and A Weekend on Lake Winnipeg, some skaters and somebody pulling a sleigh with children in it. I have a new collage and one that’s called fan dance, which is watercolour imprinting,” said Johnson.
Johnson finds inspiration for her pieces from a variety of sources.
“It could be something that we drive by on the highway. It could be birds flying. It could be, I hear somebody laughing,” said Johnson.
She explained that her style of art allows her to fuel her creativity without getting bored as she creates a few different pieces at a time.
“I usually have two or three pieces that I work on at the same time, because with watercolour, you have to sometimes let something dry before you can go back and paint again. With acrylic, it’s a very different process, because you can just paint over it. It dries very quickly. If you want it to stay wet, you have to add a little bit of water to it to keep it wet enough or to keep spraying it so it stays damp so you can do some smooth areas. With the collaging, it could live on my floor for a month. I keep shoving the pieces around until it makes sense,” she explained.
Johnson always knew she was an artist because her paternal grandmother recognized the talent in her when she was very young. She was told that as a young child, she got a hold of her grandmother’s yarn while she was knitting and started playing with it and her grandmother recognized her talent.
She’s continued to create throughout her life and now teaches art classes at the Gordon Howard Centre in Selkirk.
As an art teacher, her best advice to her students is to try doing art and to continue to create it.
“Keep doing it. The skill will come. Some take longer than others, but I’m so proud. I have a couple of 90-year-olds in my group, and they are fabulous,” said Johnson.
As a Selkirk artist Johnson has been a member of the Gwen Fox Gallery for 26 years. She welcomes residents to come by the gallery and see not just the exhibit but everything the gallery has to offer.
“It costs nothing to walk through our door. We have a wonderful gift shop full of member’s artwork. The art show is absolutely fabulous. Some of [the pieces] will make you giggle, and others will feed your soul. It’s an absolutely wonderful space and I think everybody should come through here at least once a month to pick your spirits up,” she said.
Peggy Kasuba
Kasuba is an incredibly creative person imagining amazing sculptural pieces that wow at the gallery this month. She is a multi-talented artist working in many mediums and also has some work made with ink that is striking that residents will be sure to want to check out.
“They’re fun pieces. It’s not like I really planned things, even the abstract one. It’s just like, ‘Oh, I feel like doing this today.’,” said Kasuba.
Her pieces are inspired by the property that she lives on.
“I live on 40 acres of forest and it just seemed like everything has, like a body to it, and a curve like curved branches and little flowers, and in the winter the snowbanks,” she said.
Kasuba explained that her creative process starts when she is sees something that sparks an ideal. For her more abstract pieces, she has found objects that have created that spark and then she uses them in her piece.
“I used to do that as a child too. I had my wagon, and I would pick up all kinds of junk and then make something out of it only to take it all apart and do it again,” she explained.
She says her artistic journey started this way when she was very young. She even remembers a project as a child where her mother blew out eggs for her and then she used them and other items to create a nativity scene.
From there, her creativity has only gotten bigger.
“It’s pure creativity, but at the same time, I’m inspired by like with the sky, the colours, the tumultuous clouds, all those sorts of things that happen,” said Kasuba.
As someone with an artistic style that is very destinctive, Kasuba’s advice to other artists is to be themselves.
“If you’re ready to go to classes or whatever and learn something specific, that’s great. That’s a good start. But also just pay attention and look around at the trees moving and maybe the water, or really anything, even grass and the crickets. Just sort of look around you,” she said.
She hopes that residents find some time this month to visit the gallery.
“The more shows you can go to, the more you expose yourself to art and people are so nice here. You start to get freedom from it, creative freedom, because there’s such a variety here. And nobody, nobody in this gallery is going to say, that’s not right. The encouragement here is fantastic,” she said.
Wanda Slawik
Slawik is a trained artist imigrrated to our area from Poland and has made Manitoba home for over 40 years. In this exhibit, she’s featured pieces that are an ode to Manitoba as she’s found that Manitoba has become her home.
Though in the past she has exhibited work in a variety of mediums this month she has limited herself to just a few.
“They are all pastel except I do have some small watercolours, but those are the smaller ones,” she said.
She feels that pastel as a medium lends itself well to the pieces that she’s wanted to create.
As far as inspiration goes, Slawik takes from our Manitoba landscape to create expressive vibrant paintings.
“For the last 10 years, I’ve just created Manitoba. I love my Manitoba and I’m so proud of being Manitoban,” she said.
For her, creating art is not just a creative endeavour but a way of documenting her life.
“When I see the landscape, I sometimes make a picture to document it, then I know why I’m doing the picture. Then when I start doing the painting, I know what struck me there, if it was the sky or the land, or a couple of trees I see or something else. There is a purpose from the beginning and the beauty from the beginning and I just want to grab it and maybe document in my own style,” said Slawik.
Her advice for people new to creating art is to get quality paint and paper from the beginning.
“It’s almost like you have to value yourself. If you really want to do it, you start good. You start with the good quality [supplies],” she said.
She’s been part of the Gwen Fox Gallery for about ten years and though she lives in Winnipeg she enjoys making the trip to Selkirk for the community aspect of our gallery.
“If you want to go to a different world for half an hour, come to the gallery, because this is what we offer. We offer everything. We offer, the atmosphere, the beauty, art and [it’s] accessibly [priced],” she explained.
The Gwen Fox Gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. with evening hours extending to 8 p.m. on Thursdays. Admission is, as always, free.
