Traute Klein

Traute Klein can have a painting half finished before she discovers what it is: a spray of lady slippers or a streak of aurora borealis seeping across the sky. She rarely plans these things anymore. Instead, she loads her brush and lets the colours on her palette take the lead. “I like playing,” she says.

Surprising things appear when Traute plays: cold mountains, bleeding skies, reeds caressing the moon. She likes to finish a piece in one sitting. Once, during a workshop, Traute decided the brushes provided were too small for the large canvass. So she found a plastic knife, fork and spoon from a Burger King takeout meal and used her new tools to trowel the paint onto her canvas. The result was a Canadian Shield landscape with wiry conifers silhouetted against a pulsing sun.

“I like the medium to do what it wants to do. I don’t like to impose myself on it,” she says.

As a preschooler Traute would gaze at the wood grain on cupboard doors until pictures emerged. Sixty years later she started salvaging planks from Safeway grape boxes to paint on. She’s always obedient to the images in the wood. If she doesn’t see anything, she puts the board away until she does. Under Traute’s brush, even a rescued slab of aspenite (OSB) reveals a portrait of the Virgin Mary in pressed wood chips.

Traute paints by instinct, hard work, and practicality. Her fingers are permanently paint-stained; she works wearing a smeared apron, owlish bifocals and purple flip-flops. Her face is round, contoured like a topographical map with fine lines that tend toward a smile. She keeps her grey hair short.

Traute was born in 1935 in East Prussia, the most eastern part of Germany. Her family tried in vain to flee westward to escape the imminent invasion of the Russian army. She has memories “too traumatic to speak of,” she says. Her family immigrated to Canada when she was 17.

Traute studied education at the University of Manitoba. She holds a BA, a BEd and an MA in German. She worked as a teacher until an accident with a drunk driver 28 years ago left her in such physical and emotional pain she was unable to teach. Instead she created an unconventional natural garden in her yard “in harmony with Mother Nature” and began writing an online column and teaching workshops on Natural Health.

All her life Traute has expressed herself through crafts, painting and music (her first love). She crochets toques, writes music, sings in choirs, accompanies congregational singing, creates mosaics, glazes other people’s discarded pottery and uses steak knives to carve animals from scraps of soapstone. Making art from junk is a skill she learned as a refugee. When paper was scarce she made paper cuttings from old newspapers and drew pictures of wildflowers on used envelopes turned inside out.

“I have to create things,” she says. “When you’ve got it in you, you can’t stop.”

Email:  lanawinfield@hotmail.com |  Website:  http://lanawinfield.bravehost.com

Josee Wiedmer

There are so many wonderful experiences and challenges working in the art of photography as a self-taught artist.  Learning how to create unique works of art with the use of digital photography and assorted computer programs or using a basic 35mm camera and view the world in its simplicity.  All of these forms of photography inspire me to share my view of the world with everyone.

Email:  bijouw@shaw.ca

All the photographs are 11 x 14 at a cost of $45

Doug Wiebe

Doug Wiebe arrived in Winnipeg in November 2008 to assume the role of Pastor to the Parish of Exchange Community Church.  He has been working with mosaics as a hobby for the past ten years.  He is especially drawn to art involving the use of recycled/broken/discarded material, unofficially calling his studio “Cracked Pot – Beauty from Ashes”.  His works have sold at Art from the Heart, Habitat ReStore, Keepsakes Gallery and Arts Junktion.

Email:  douglaswiebe1@gmail.com |  Phone:  (204) 250‑3268

Erin Wicks

I work mostly in textiles.  I enjoy knitting and most needle crafts.  I volunteer at MAWA and love spending time amongst other women artists.

Email:  ewicks_31@hotmail.com

Charmaine Watt

Charmaine Watt, an exceptionally talented artist, is well known throughout Manitoba.  Charmaine knows no boundaries: she works in combined and many separate medias.  Her landscapes especially show excellent perspective and realism.  She greatly enjoys teaching beginner artists and has joyfully watched her students bud and flourish into fine artists themselves.

Email:  positivelycharming@shaw.ca |  Phone: (204) 885‑6361

Emily Wasyluk

Emily was born in Winnipeg in 1992. She is currently a student at the University of Manitoba in the Fine Arts program.  Van Gogh and his letters to his brother Theo largely influence Emily.  She experiments in all mediums.  Subjects in her art include capturing the unnoticed.  She uses art as a form of expression of inner feelings and emotions.

Email:  emily.wasyluk@hotmail.com