Visual Arts

Please review each article prior to use: grade-level applicability and curricular alignment might not be obvious from the headline alone.

Marta Guerrero photo Xavier Mutshipayi dans son atelier.
No Subscription Required

Quand les émotions se dégagent des formes et des couleurs

Lucille Dourlens 4 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Quand les émotions se dégagent des formes et des couleurs

Lucille Dourlens 4 minute read Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025

L’artiste peintre Xavier Mutshipayi présente pour la première fois ses créations dans l’exposition Nouveaux Horizons à la galerie d’art du Centre culturel franco-manitobain (CCFM).

Il s’agit de la troisième présentation solo du peintre originaire du Congo. L’occasion pour lui de présenter une nouvelle facette de son travail. En effet, si Xavier Mutshipayi est plutôt connu pour son style réaliste, ses créations évoluent ici vers l’art abstrait et l’impressionnisme.

La galerie du CCFM accueille environ une dizaine de tableaux dont la majorité ont été conçus pour l’évènement. Parmi eux, quatre toiles arborent un style abstrait tandis que quatre autres reprennent les codes du mouvement impressionniste. Cette évolution artistique s’est développée au fil des années pour Xavier Mutshipayi.

“Comme pour l’homme, l’artiste grandit et change avec le temps. L’endroit où j’habite et mon parcours de vie m’inspirent dans mes créations. C’est pourquoi il y a beaucoup de portraits dans mes œuvres. À force de travailler, j’ai développé un style, une patte.”

Read
Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025
How sweet it is
No Subscription Required

New Jenna Rae cookbook focuses on bakers’ favourite home recipes

Eva Wasney 6 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

New Jenna Rae cookbook focuses on bakers’ favourite home recipes

Eva Wasney 6 minute read Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024

There’s a sweet new edition on the way.

Sisters Jenna Hutchinson and Ashley Kosowan are expanding their successful local bakery business with a new cookbook venture. Jenna Rae Cakes at Home: Our Favourite Recipes to Enjoy with Family and Friends hits bookstores Oct. 8 and features more than 100 colourful, family-friendly recipes.

The cookbook is a followup to their first release, Jenna Rae Cakes and Sweet Treats, and is a labour of love that brings together the twins’ individual interests.

“Ash was meant to make cookbooks,” says Hutchinson, whose passion for cake design prompted the entrepreneurial siblings to open their first Jenna Rae Cakes shop in 2014.

Read
Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024
The Crave app is seen on a phone in Toronto on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019. Crave is introducing two ad-supported tiers that each shave $5 or $10 off the monthly subscription fee. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy
No Subscription Required

Crave introduces ad tiers, including $9.99 plan

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Crave introduces ad tiers, including $9.99 plan

The Canadian Press 2 minute read Saturday, Sep. 20, 2025

TORONTO - Crave is introducing two ad-supported tiers that each shave $5 or $10 off the monthly subscription fee.

Bell Media says its new Crave Basic with Ads costs $9.99/month, while Crave Standard with Ads costs $14.99/month. An unchanged ad-free option remains at $19.99/month, and is renamed Crave Premium Ad-Free.

Viewers can watch most shows and movies, including HBO and Max originals, on the ad-supported plans. About one per cent of titles won't be available due to licensing restrictions.

Ads will be 15 or 30 seconds long, totalling about five minutes per hour, and appear before and during some episodes and films.

Read
Saturday, Sep. 20, 2025
JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Faiza Malik, 16, shows off one of her untitled paintings at her Winnipeg home. Malik, who moved to Canada nine years ago from Afghanistan, credits art and creativity with helping her transition to her new life here.
No Subscription Required

Teenage artist finds creative process helps her tap into emotions, find sense of self

Sabrina Carnevale 7 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Teenage artist finds creative process helps her tap into emotions, find sense of self

Sabrina Carnevale 7 minute read Monday, Oct. 18, 2021

Faiza Malik found more than peace and safety when she and her family arrived in Canada from Afghanistan nine years ago — she also found art.

The 16-year-old credits art and creativity with helping her transition to a new life. Now she wants to work with local kids to give them access to resources she never had growing up.

“I started painting when I first arrived in Canada when I was in Grade 2 or Grade 3. We had those little art projects in school and I was always excited to do those things because I was using my hands and creating something new,” Malik says. “Art wasn’t really a thing that was available in Afghanistan.”

She admits the culture shock was all-consuming when she and her family, including her mom, dad and three siblings, first arrived here.

Read
Monday, Oct. 18, 2021
Photos by Shel Zolkewich / Winnipeg Free Press When Paint Lake is still, reflections are highly effective for capturing fall colours. Simply stroll through the picnic and beach areas for great views.
No Subscription Required

Falling for a splash of colour

Shel Zolkewich 2 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Falling for a splash of colour

Shel Zolkewich 2 minute read Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021

How silently they tumble downAnd come to rest upon the groundTo lay a carpet, rich and rare,Beneath the trees without a care,Content to sleep, their work well done,Colors gleaming in the sun.

Leaves, by Elsie N. Brady

The autumn equinox has come and gone, leaving a fully-fledged landscape to show off its finery every day. The luminescent yellow aspen leaves tip back and forth, back and forth. Maples slip into deep burgundy coats. And in the north, the delicate tamaracks blaze with gold. Fall foliage is in full swing. Time to grab a camera and hit the road.

Hecla Island Provincial Park promises a variety of landscape, offering plenty of diversity in not only its resident trees — including tamarack and birch — but also its stands of phragmites (common reeds) and cattails. You also have a great chance of spotting migrating bald eagles and plenty of waterfowl too.

Read
Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021
JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Winnipeg Art Gallery’s new Inuit Art Centre in Winnipeg Tuesday, March 16, 2021. Reporter: ?
No Subscription Required

At 50, the WAG is embracing a spirit of reconciliation and reinvention

Alan Small 6 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

At 50, the WAG is embracing a spirit of reconciliation and reinvention

Alan Small 6 minute read Friday, Sep. 24, 2021

Paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and Group of Seven artists such as L.L. FitzGerald were among the famous paintings on display when the Winnipeg Art Gallery opened its doors 50 years ago today.

Grand works all, but it was a few sculptures by Inuit artists that were also on display that caught the eye of Princess Margaret, who gave the gallery its grand unveiling on Sept. 25, 1971, during her royal visit to the city, the Free Press reported then.

Perhaps the princess was onto something. Half a century later, works by Indigenous artists are no longer mere curiosities that add variety to exhibitions showcasing the old masters.

Indigenous art at the WAG has become the showcase.

Read
Friday, Sep. 24, 2021
ken gigliotti winnipeg free press dec4 2002 feature on wpg architecture- Winnipeg Art Gallery WAG ,(old beater cars parked at base could not get better shot as building is underconstruction )-kg
No Subscription Required

WAG's angular architecture combines form, function in a building both timeless and of its time

Alison Gillmor 8 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

WAG's angular architecture combines form, function in a building both timeless and of its time

Alison Gillmor 8 minute read Friday, Sep. 24, 2021

Asked to talk about the Winnipeg Art Gallery building, Stephen Borys pauses for a moment.

“If I had to describe it in one word, it would be ‘timeless,’” says Borys, current director and CEO of the WAG.

Over the course of the Qaumajuq project, Borys found himself looking at photographs of the original WAG structure, designed by Hong Kong-born Canadian architect Gustavo da Roza, from its 1971 opening right up to the present.

“It’s one of Canada’s significant late modernist buildings,” Borys states. “But you look at these photos, and other than the make of cars and the way people dress, it’s hard to put a date on. And that is something that speaks not just of great architecture. It has a resonance beyond a style or a period.”

Read
Friday, Sep. 24, 2021
Photos by Daniel Crump / Winnipeg Free Press Pajack Obeing is a mentee in the Raising New Voices mentorship program, which aims to provide opportunities for emerging artists from communities typically underrepresented in the arts world.
No Subscription Required

Magnificent mentorship program

Julia-Simone Rutgers 7 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Magnificent mentorship program

Julia-Simone Rutgers 7 minute read Tuesday, Sep. 7, 2021

Sitting on a piano bench at the back of the St. Norbert Arts Centre gallery space Thursday, up-and-coming musician Tomiwa Omolayo is wearing rose-coloured glasses — literally.

It’s the same pair of tinted shades (accented by a rolled-up mustard-yellow toque) the self-proclaimed optimist wore for his first live show since the COVID-19 pandemic: a performance on the GerryFest 2021 stage.

“I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if the music would connect,” Omolayo said, thinking back to the August 13 show on a breezy outdoor stage at the arts centre. “I’m trying to make something that’s different, something that’s fresh.”

The Lagos-born 23-year-old is an Afrofusion artist who launched his career blending a variety of musical genres with the classic sounds of afrobeats in 2018, after moving from Nigeria to Winnipeg for school just a few years before.

Read
Tuesday, Sep. 7, 2021
Supplied Charlie Johnston portrays an elaborate game of cat’s cradle that becomes a cosmic session of electrochemical psychotherapy at 357 Eveline St. in Selkirk.
No Subscription Required

Selkirk art crawl centres on city's thriving mural scene

Ben Waldman  6 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Selkirk art crawl centres on city's thriving mural scene

Ben Waldman  6 minute read Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021

Sometimes a wall is more than just a wall.

It’s a blank canvas. And in recent years, artists in Selkirk have turned several into works of art, highlighting local figures and traditions, using paint to transform bricks and plaster in the downtown into a growing visual history of the city.

Since 2018, nearly 20 murals have emerged, depicting everything from the traditional community round dance to Indigenous and settler women thriving on the Prairie landscape to a grandmother passing on her teachings. Others bring needed attention to the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and to everyone affected, in the past and present, by the Indian Residential School System, those who came home and those who never did, artist Jordan Stranger says.

All these murals will serve as the backdrop for a free public art crawl Sept. 4 and 5, with local vendors and artisans posting up next to them and getting a long-awaited opportunity to share their work with the community, including handmade goods, paintings, crafts, sewing and woodworking pieces, and much more.

Read
Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021
ANDREW RYAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Chris Hadley works on the prosthetic Beast head at his home studio in Winnipeg.
No Subscription Required

Former mechanic gives a face to Rainbow Stage's Beast

Randall King 5 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Former mechanic gives a face to Rainbow Stage's Beast

Randall King 5 minute read Sunday, Oct. 12, 2025

It’s not exactly a tale as old as time.

About 20 years ago, Christian Hadley was an auto mechanic dissatisfied with the grind of machining auto parts and deflated at the prospect of repairing another tire.

He needed a change, and not the kind involving 5W30 motor oil.

His career pivot was, quite literally, dramatic. At the age of 25, he went to the University of Winnipeg to study theatre arts. He emerged with skills in both set-building and makeup design. And he brings those skills to fruition in the Rainbow Stage production of Beauty and the Beast.

Read
Sunday, Oct. 12, 2025
No Subscription Required

L’avenir de l’Arctique au cœur de Breaking Ice

Morgane Lemée de La Liberté pour le Winnipeg Free Press 4 minute read Saturday, Apr. 7, 2018

Breaking Ice, c’est un aperçu de la vie sur un brise-glace de recherche, au beau milieu de l’Arctique. À travers son premier long-métrage documentaire, Christopher Paetkau transmet un message sur des enjeux environnementaux cruciaux pour le Canada et le monde entier. Entre frissons et passion.

Christopher Paetkau, Trevor Gill et Carlyle Paetkau ont fondé la maison de production manitobaine Build Films en 2013. Après plusieurs documentaires et publicités, Breaking Ice est leur plus grand projet. Il vise d’ailleurs à répondre au point central de leur mission: les enjeux de l’Arctique.

“Nous travaillons beaucoup dans l’Arctique, surtout sur des aires marines protégées. Au début, c’était une question de curiosité. Puis, ça nous a vraiment pris aux tripes. Une fois là, on réalise à quel point ces paysages sont complexes et fascinants. Pour nous, l’émotion n’est pas d’avoir une caméra entre les mains. Elle vient d’être capable de transmettre un message.

“Quand vous sentez le sol littéralement fondre sous vos pieds et que vous savez que des gens vivent ici, il y a vraiment de quoi se poser des questions. À mon avis, l’Arctique est d’une actualité brûlante. Il y a tant de choses à entreprendre.”

Daniel Bahuaud photo ‘Toute la francophonie nord-américaine est liée’: Le bédéiste québécois Jocelyn Jalette a rendu hommage à Louis Riel en visitant, le 8 novembre dernier, la tombe du Père du Manitoba. Riel a été pendu le 16 novembre 1885.
No Subscription Required

Riel, le lien entre les francos d’Amérique

Daniel Bahuaud de La Liberté pour le Winnipeg Free Press  5 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Riel, le lien entre les francos d’Amérique

Daniel Bahuaud de La Liberté pour le Winnipeg Free Press  5 minute read Saturday, Nov. 18, 2017

Pour Jocelyn Jalette, bédéiste de Joliette, au Québec, pas besoin d’être métis, ou manitobain, ou encore francophone en milieu minoritaire pour apprécier le combat, le triomphe et la tragédie de Louis Riel. Et voici pourquoi.

Dans La République assassinée des Métis, la bande dessinée de Jocelyn Jalette qui vient tout juste d’être publiée aux Éditions du Phoenix (www.editionsduphoenix.com), des personnages fictifs côtoient Louis Riel et Gabriel Dumont, mais aussi les politiciens Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, Louis-Joseph Papineau et Honoré Mercier.

Une palette de personnages pour mieux placer la résistance des Métis dans un contexte francophone plus large, comme le souligne l’auteur de 47 ans :

“Les liens sont étroits entre la résistance des Métis, Louis Riel et les francophones du Québec. Surtout quand on se rappelle que la lutte pour assurer un statut d’égalité entre le français, l’anglais, et les cultures francophone et anglophone, c’est l’affaire de tous les francophones.”

Read
Saturday, Nov. 18, 2017
RUBY IRENE PRATKA PHOTO Pascal Boutroy, le cofondateur du Festival international de films pour enfants de tous âges Freeze Frame, invite enfants et adultes à élargir leurs horizons cinématiques.
No Subscription Required

Un festival qui fait confiance aux enfants

Ruby Irene Pratka 4 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Un festival qui fait confiance aux enfants

Ruby Irene Pratka 4 minute read Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016

Depuis 20 ans, le Festival international de films pour enfants de tous âges Freeze Frame valorise la perspective des plus jeunes et les incite à penser. Le cofondateur du festival, Pascal Boutroy, est un cinéphile de longue date.

“J’ai découvert le cinéma pour enfants dans les années 1990, quand j’ai travaillé comme critique de cinéma à Montréal. Surtout, j’ai découvert quelque chose d’extraordinaire: des films intelligents et sensibles. Et j’ai vu l’effet que cela pouvait avoir sur les enfants. Quand ils sortent de la salle, ils ont appris des choses à propos d’eux-mêmes.”

En 1996, nouvellement arrivés à Winnipeg, Boutroy et sa conjointe, Nicole Matiation, cofondent le festival Freeze Frame. En 20 ans le festival, qui met à l’affiche des films en plusieurs langues, y compris le français, est devenu le festival de cinéma le plus fréquenté au Manitoba, avec entre 6,000 et 8,000 participants chaque année.

Boutroy attribue le succès du festival à la diversité de la programmation.

Read
Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016
PHOTO BY DANIEL BAHUAUD Cyril Parent
No Subscription Required

Ceci est mon drapeau

By Daniel Bahuaud 5 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Ceci est mon drapeau

By Daniel Bahuaud 5 minute read Saturday, Mar. 22, 2014

DEPUIS plus de deux ans, vous lisez chaque semaine le Fil des francophiles dans ce journal.

Vous commencez à connaître davantage la communauté francomanitobaine. Mais connaissez-vous son drapeau?

Examinez bien la photo qui accompagne cet article. Il est fort possible que vous ayez vu ce drapeau flotter au mat d’une école française. Peutêtre l’avez-vous vu au Festival du Voyageur, à l’entrée de l’Université de Saint-Boniface, sur un T-shirt ou encore sur le pare-choc d’une voiture. En 2010, il a même flotté au mat de la Tour de la Paix du Parlement canadien, à Ottawa!

En fait, si les Franco-Manitobains en ont fait leur drapeau, il n’empêche que le drapeau est relativement récent, ayant été créé, et adopté par la communauté francophone, en 1980.

Read
Saturday, Mar. 22, 2014
Postmedia Getty Images Kate Moss in an advertisement. Jean Kilbourne has dissected the ways in which ads create impossible ideals that women must spend an incredible amount of time, energy and money chasing.
No Subscription Required

Ad another thing: sounding the alarm about advertising’s ill effects on society

By Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Ad another thing: sounding the alarm about advertising’s ill effects on society

By Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013

Jean Kilbourne was an adbuster long before there was anything close to resembling Adbusters.

When the acclaimed feminist scholar, author, filmmaker and media literacy pioneer, who speaks Thursday at 7:30 p.m., at the University of Winnipeg's Convocation Hall, began tearing advertisements out of magazines and posting them on her refrigerator back in 1968, she didn't know she would start a movement, let alone a respected field of study.

At the time, she just wanted to open people's eyes. She assembled the ads she collected into a slideshow presentation that she took to college campuses in the 1970s. She had one goal: tell anyone who would listen about the damaging effect ads were having on women.

"I was the first person to start talking about the image of women in advertising," Kilbourne, 70, recalls. "(The ads) were outrageous and no one was paying attention to them."

Read
Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013
WILLIAM SINEUX / LA LIBERTÉ Réal Bérard fait des cartes uniques et très précises des rivières manitobaines, agrémentées de croquis et descriptifs de tout ce qui fait l’identité des rivières qu’il explore.
No Subscription Required

Réal explorateur

By William Sineux / De La Liberté pour le Winnipeg Free Press 5 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Réal explorateur

By William Sineux / De La Liberté pour le Winnipeg Free Press 5 minute read Saturday, Apr. 14, 2012

RÉAL Bérard est l’un des rares explorateurs des temps modernes à partir à l’assaut des rivières capricieuses armé de son canoë, de papier et d’un crayon.

Réal Bérard est en effet le premier à avoir entrepris de cartographier pour le gouvernement puis par passion l’ensemble des rivières manitobaines.

Depuis 1961 le cartographe parcourt ainsi des kilomètres de rivières et des jours durant, pour les dessiner et les décrire dans les moindres détails afin de créer des cartes uniques en leur genre.

“Après avoir fait les Beaux-arts de Montréal j’ai travaillé pour le ministère des ressources naturelles et je patrouillais sur les rivières jusqu’au jour où j’ai voulu intégrer mon art à mon travail de tous les jours en dessinant et peignant ce que je voyais.”

Read
Saturday, Apr. 14, 2012
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Briand-Nelson Mutima a réalisé cette murale en acrylique, intitulée Le passage, dans le cadre de son cours d'art au Collège Louis-Riel.
No Subscription Required

Des pinceaux contre le traumatisme

Camille Séguy de La Liberté pour le Winnipeg Free Press 4 minute read Preview
No Subscription Required

Des pinceaux contre le traumatisme

Camille Séguy de La Liberté pour le Winnipeg Free Press 4 minute read Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012

À 18 ans, Briand-Nelson Mutima a déjà acquis une grande expérience dans le domaine de la peinture. L'élève de 12e année au Collège Louis-Riel (CLR), originaire de la République démocratique du Congo, dessine depuis qu'il a cinq ans et peint depuis qu'il en a 12.

Il a d'abord travaillé la gouache, avant d'apprendre l'art de l'acrylique, la peinture à l'huile et l'aquarelle.

La passion de Briand-Nelson Mutima pour la peinture est liée de près avec sa vie. Les pinceaux et les crayons l'ont notamment aidé à surmonter son bégaiement, car ça lui permettait de s'exprimer et de se faire des amis, mais ils lui ont surtout permis de surmonter des traumatismes.

"Je fais partie de la troisième génération de gens ayant vécu la guerre au Congo," raconte-t-il. "Ma famille a dû fuir au Cameroun où j'ai vécu 11 ans avant de venir au Canada. Ma mère m'a dit que quand on est arrivés au Cameroun, j'étais traumatisé par la guerre et que mes premiers dessins étaient toujours des soldats avec des armes. Aujourd'hui encore, il y a toujours un signe de souffrance dans la plupart de mes tableaux."

Read
Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012