Teaching the craft Educating youth major priority for artist By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Friday, Aug. 28, 2026

It has to be among the biggest skateboard decks in the country, and it hangs in Peatr Thomas’s art studio on Donald Street in the Exchange District.

The four-metre deck’s artwork created by Thomas, depicts Cree skateboarder Joe Buffalo, spirit lines radiating from his airborne figure, as he becomes the first skater to jump over a massive gap (also four metres) in Montreal’s Peace Park.

“I like that idea and practice of falling and getting up again, over and over to achieve something,” says Thomas, 39.

It’s a lesson he applies to his art practice.

Shortly after The New Yorker collaborated with legendary American skateboarder Tony Hawk on a 2021 short film about Buffalo, Thomas connected with the Vancouver-based pro skater.

“We just wanted to commemorate (that jump), and I was grateful that he reached out to help him envision that,” says Thomas, who is Cree and Ojibwa.

“He knows the history of every single one of these buildings in this image, what they used to be and what they are now.”

No one has (yet) attempted to skateboard on the four-metre deck, but its design was used as a template for more standard-sized decks sold at Revolution 514’s skateboard shop in Montreal.

Thomas contrasts the sensibilities of academically trained artists and self-taught artists like himself, whose work draws widely on street art and culture, such as graffiti and skateboarding. He has a journeyman’s spirit of adaptability and love of working with his hands.

“I try to cover a little bit of everything, and I think that that just comes with ADHD, right? Sculpture work, woodwork, and then going into the digital space as well,” says Thomas, who created the art that covered the main-floor windows of the downtown Bay building as it awaited transformation by the Southern Chiefs Organization into the mixed-use redevelopment called Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn.

“And when it comes to anything (by artists) that’s, like, institutional or from a university school setting — that’s all to benefit capitalism, right?”

It’s cliché to treat graffiti and skateboarding as in tension with artforms such as architecture, being sources of damage to buildings, monuments and the cityscape.

Though Thomas — who moved to Winnipeg for high school, graduating in 2005 — is a carpenter by training, he seems to find as much common cause with designers and builders as traditional fine artists.

“Everything you touch is created by artists. It’s not just a way of expressing or beautifying this or that building. It’s literally everything,” he says.

Thomas has erected a gallery inside his studio, an array of installations, sculptures and skateboards of every possible size along with an archive of his work in far-flung places.

And while he exhibits occasionally in the city — his next opening is Nov. 6 at the new No Theme gallery at 296 McDermot Ave. — he subtly critiques the “art for art” ethos of some contemporary art, where work is elevated by being abstracted from function and worldly environments.

“One of the things that street art taught me was to be in the moment as much as you can. This will never be recreated. That’s everything,” he says.

This transience finds a parallel in the natural world, with its cycles of life and death, bloom and decay. Rather than drawing a sharp distinction between natural and urban environments, Thomas — who moves regularly between Winnipeg, Bloodvein First Nation, Cross Lake First Nation, Canada’s North and elsewhere — lets disparate influences mingle harmoniously in his canvases and designs.

At times, his hard-edged, boldly coloured depictions of eagles and animals resemble the Anishinaabeg-dominant Woodland School of painting. Other times, they feel closer to the graffiti legends of New York, Montreal and Los Angeles.

“Once I started learning more about my culture then I really started embracing it in my artwork because I was learning about what these different teachings are,” he says.

While Thomas is a popular graphic designer, at the moment, his instincts seem to find their most natural outlet in mural-making, for which he is highly sought after across the country.

When he travels to remote places such as Yellowknife or Whitehorse to create murals, he also tries to pack in a couple days of youth workshops, sometimes collaborating with young people on murals, he says.

“When I work with youth, we’ll do everything together from brainstorming the concept and how to scale it up, to the actual painting of it,” he says.

Thomas emphasizes that despite his skepticism for formal and academic approaches to creativity, education — learning face to face, mentor to mentee — goes to the heart of his mission as an artist. He sees this more personal style of exchange as the best way to foster self-esteem and a holistic vision of creativity that can rear the next generation of builders, designers and artists.

“They always say youth is our future, right? And you know, that’s 100 per cent true. So it’s like, what are you leaving behind? What are you doing to help with this newer generation? Being your genuine self is enough.”

conrad.sweatman@winnipegfreepress.com