City artist battling to hang on for just one more Christmas

The family of East Kildonan artist Gerald Folkerts decided to celebrate Christmas early this year.

They wanted to count their blessings while everyone still could.

A miracle will be required for Folkerts, who was diagnosed in September with an inoperable brain tumour, to enjoy another yultide season.

That said, he has had much to be thankful for.

Besides his wife of 28 years, Arlis, their four children and two grandchildren, the big, friendly pony-tailed painter has been able to devote most of the last 13 years, since he gave up teaching, to pursuing his muse.

Working from a third-floor studio in his rambling old home, the 50-year-old artist has produced a body of work noted for its technical assurance, its empathy for human suffering and its consistency with his life-long Christian convictions.

His rewards have not always been financial, but they have satisfied him in more meaningful ways.

And as a stalwart in the Manitoba Society of Artists, the province's oldest artists' guild, he has had his share of recognition.

In June 2006, an ambitious painting from his most recent series, Head Over Heels, took first prize in the group's 74th annual juried exhibition.

It was the fifth time in eight years, and the sixth time in total, that Folkerts topped all entrants in the show.

His work has been displayed in numerous group and solo exhibitions in North America, and he was an award winner at the Imago Christian art exhibition in Toronto.

"Gerald's artworks are well-conceived and never about nothing," says his friend and colleague Ray Dirks, the director of the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery. "They are a reflection of the artist, compassionate and caring, searching for what is good and decent, especially in corners of our society the mainstream tends to ignore."

Tragically, Folkerts has become like the subjects of some of his most compelling works -- people ill, in bed, hope seemingly gone.

The bad news came out of nowhere. He, Arlis and their youngest child, Brendan had returned from an August camping trip in B.C.

Arlis, a student assessment consultant with the River East-Transcona School Division, began to notice her husband was behaving in some uncharacteristic ways. His energy level wasn't what it usually was, and his habits changed. He'd stay up until all hours of the night, and then sleep away the morning. He seemed to be depressed.

On Sept. 1, she took him to emergency at Seven Oaks General Hospital.

Within days, they had a diagnosis -- a malignant "butterfly" tumour, so-called because it had embedded itself in both hemispheres at the front of his brain.

Their daughter-in-law, Dana, started an Internet blog, A Gravel Road Journey, to document the family's feelings and to keep friends and family members apprised of Folkerts' condition.

A Gravel Road Studio, by the way, is what Folkerts calls his art studio.

"As Dad explains, gravel roads take us off life's busy highway and force us to slow down," Dana writes. "When we slow down, we have time to notice the things around us, the things that matter the most."

At the time, the doctors told Folkerts that even with successful treatment, he would live only a year to 18 months. As he began a course of radiation, he documented the experience with photographs and even saved ephemera, like the staples from biopsy.

But over the fall, the tumour did not respond to radiation or chemotherapy. By late November, he could no longer deal with the stairs in their home. Arlis had a hospital bed set up for him in the family room and they have home-care support.

Friends and fellow congregants of the Covenant Christian Reformed Church have been regular visitors. So have Arlis's school-division colleagues, many of whom have brought meals.

"God's grace has been all around us," says Arlis, 49, who met Folkerts at Christian liberal arts college in her home state of Iowa.

"Sometimes I've struggled to make sense of what is happening and with a sense of loss, not just to our family but for the broader community as well."

Meanwhile, Dirks and another mutual friend, the singer-songwriter Steve Bell, are organizing a tribute exhibition of Folkerts' paintings, to be held Jan. 29-31 at the Outworks Gallery at 290 McDermot Ave. They've also set up an website dedicated to his paintings at www.folkerts.ca.

"Gerald is not afraid of either beauty or suffering," Bell says. "His paintings come out of an engaged life -- within family, local community and global awareness."

Right now, the family is taking it day by day. Under medication to control hiccups caused by the tumour, Folkerts sleeps a lot of the time. He is not in pain. He and Arlis have been planning his funeral.

And he appears to have squared the apparent unfairness of his situation with his Christian beliefs.

"Sometimes I get angry with myself for it being so hard to bear," he says. "I wish I had a profound answer, but I don't."

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 20, 2008 C13