Our Artists
Gene Bricker
Active Member – Prince George, BC
Gene grew up in South Fort George where he continues to enjoy the familiarity and rural feel of the neighbourhood. The Hudson’s Bay Slough is a frequent subject of Gene’s paintings, with its subdued colours and peaceful qualities.
Gene’s favourite colour is grey because of its mood and the mood that can be created with grey. Gene believes that tonal pictures leave more to the imagination than colourful, or intense colour pictures.
Painting is hard work where the artist is always challenged to do better. Learning that the Old Masters painted in oil led Gene to follow suit. The craft of painting has been a learned thing and Gene is constantly learning and updating his technique. When working from photographs, Gene crops them to create a more interesting composition.
The image is first drawn on the canvas with charcoal, pencil, or a brush. Then it is sprayed with fixative so that it won’t smudge and provides an idea of the initial layout and design. Larger masses are laid in first to see things in terms of tone, regardless of colour. The first layer is left to dry and then the design is scrubbed in. With oil paint one can add as many layers as needed, until it feels the value and mood of the subject have been captured.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a good draughtsman or a good painter, if you don’t have an idea, you haven’t anything. Gene feels that the great paintings are ‘ideas’. Every once in a while an idea comes to fruition which is rewarding when it happens. Every painting is one of a kind because nobody can make that stroke of colour or that stroke of pigment the same, it’s always changing
Laura Chandler, BFA (Hon)
Active Member – Prince George, BC
Laura (Laurie) Chandler is a long time resident of Prince George, working as an artist and art educator. She has been exhibiting her work in juried shows since 2001 in the Central Interior’s annual Art Festival as well as a solo show and other group exhibitions at Two Rivers Gallery.
There have been many highlights in the artist’s career including various community projects. In particular having work selected for the 2012 Prince George city highway banners that depicted the local cutbanks and wildlife as well as work for gifting for the 2015 Canada Games, are well-noted achievements. She was also honoured to be the featured artist at City Hall for the year in 2016.
Laura was accepted into the Federation of Canadian Artists as an Active member in 2017. Her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions with the Federation as well as having received Honourable Mention in the 2018 Concept show. She has also helped to establish the 12th FCA chapter called the Central Interior Chapter as of 2018 and served as Vice President on the executive for two years. She has been honoured to participate in the first three CIC exhibitions held in Prince George. Recently Bayview magazine (Winter 2019-20) published an article about Laura’s art career with a focus on her piece Home Is Where the Heart Is.
In her home studio, she works on a variety of topics: landscapes, portraits, still life and other various themes. She prefers to work mainly in acrylics and watercolours. Her work has found homes across Canada as well as in many other countries.
Bobbie Crane, AFC
Active Member – Lac La Hache, BC
Bobbie Crane’s career as a self-taught acrylic wildlife artist has taught her to pay attention to design composition, sketching birds and animals anatomically correct and the many layers of fur and feather application. Bobbie leads many acrylic workshops in the South Cariboo region of B.C. She has won many awards and is represented by Parkside Art Gallery, 100 Mile House, Station House Gallery, Williams Lake, Quesnel Art Gallery, Quesnel, B.C. She has facilitated Art Crawl 2019, 100 Mile House, along with many volunteer hours fundraising for arts community in 100 Mile House, B.C.
She states: In the love of nature I strive for somewhat realism and to tell a story with my art work.
Melanie Desjardines
Active Member – Prince George, BC
Melanie Desjardines was born in Saskatchewan, raised in Ashcroft B.C., lived and worked in Edmonton for 15 years, and currently resides in Prince George, B.C.
Primarily self-taught as an artist, she maintains that her child-like approach to experimentation and discovery is paramount to her art-making, and largely accountable for the style she has developed.
Watercolors were her first love, but owning a sheet metal shop has proven beneficial to her art-making practice. She uses metal as her canvas in much of her work, experimenting with acrylic mediums, found items and rust techniques. She is always looking for unique ways to explore the properties of different products, found objects for assemblage, substrates, and testing results with dissimilar materials. She wants to move into three dimensional work as well, but complains that there aren’t enough hours in the day for all of her ideas and inspirations.
Her favorite motto remains “There are no rules”. Creating imagery that delights the eye, shocks or surprises us, or simply questions the mind or the process, is what excites her. She believes that being creative is a state of mind, a way of thinking and looking at things a little differently than most.
“I love to create impressionistic landscapes and journeys into make-believe places. I find visual excitement in every day and in every ‘thing’, and always work hard to memorize impressions that are created in my mind’s eye so that I may express the mood, and the imagery through my art”
Wendy Framst
Active Member – Prince George, BC
I have drawn and painted all my life, but it was only after I began to create Art about and for my 2 beautiful children that I became serious about being an artist. My first published paintings are illustrations for the children’s book “Feathers” and many of the scenes use my children as models for the images.
In addition to painting, illustrating and instructing art, I have worked as a social worker for 30 years. Each year for the past 12 years, I have taken a mini sabbatical from work and family to participate in intensive painting and sketchbook workshops progressively farther and farther afield. I have had the opportunity to work with some of my favourite contemporary watercolour artists from around the world: Elizabeth Kincaid, Birgit O’Connor, Tom Lynch, Paul Jackson and Soon Y. Warren. These workshops have taken place in beautiful settings: Mendocino California, Cape Cod Massachusetts, Paris and Southern France, throughout Italy including Venice, Bonnie Scotland and Mexico!
I now work primarily in watercolour which facilitates my exploration of colour, composition, value and form. I have been given tremendous opportunities to instruct, to have my Art featured in books and on film and most recently, I have begun to release online watercolour tutorials. These are available on YouTube, Udemy and Skillshare.
I want to thank my family and friends for their support and encouragement to pursue my passion!
Andrea S. Fredeen
President
Active Member – Prince George, BC
Originally from Saskatchewan, Andrea S. Fredeen is an artist based in Prince George, British Columbia.
Andrea’s work is about the people and animals in her life, and the landscapes she has experienced. She takes photographs, draws, and paints on site, and uses these as references for finished work in her studio.
Andrea raised her family with her husband and worked as a physiotherapist while pursuing her lifelong interest in art. She achieved her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the University of Northern British Columbia (2014), and a Master of Arts in English (2016), with a creative thesis that included her short stories and paintings. She has since retired from physiotherapy to focus on her visual art. She is grateful for the support and encouragement from her family which has allowed her to pursue her passion, and to add her voice to those of other artists documenting the world around us.
Pat Gauthier
Active Member – Fort St. James, BC
Born and raised in British Columbia, and has lived in Fort St James since 1977. She raised her family here, has had many jobs, and lastly retired from ranching.
Retirement has meant more time for Art. Her studio/ gallery/house is filled with paintings. The winters are long here in the north, which gives her plenty of time to paint. Summer finds her riding horses with the grandchildren and her garden and plein air painting. Initially self-taught but has been attending workshops with professional artists to further her education. Her favorite mediums are Oils, Acrylics, Watercolor, whatever the given subject is, whether it is studio work or Plein air painting. She has been giving workshops and teaches from her Studio. She describes herself as a realist with an enthusiastic interest in the use of color.
She currently is an Active Member of the Federated Canadian Artists. She has shown work throughout the province of British Columbia as well as Global online shows. Her work is in collections across Canada. She plans to travel and paint in the most exciting places, teach and give back her knowledge to those that also love Art.
Maureen Hobbs-Wheeler
Active Member – Quesnel, BC
I am a long time Quesnel BC Artist; I have been painting part time for almost 40 years. I have no formal education, but have taken classes and workshops with some great artists over the years, including a masterclass with Robert Bateman. I am an active member of The Federation of Canadian Artists, The Quesnel Art Gallery, and The Quesnel and District Community Arts Council. I paint with acrylics mostly, but I will occasionally experiment with other mediums. British Columbia and Alberta provide so much inspiration with the beautiful scenery and wildlife, I will never run out of things to paint. My style is semi-realistic with touches of abstract. I have taught classes at various venues in Quesnel, and now in our new space, Spirit Square Studios, we started this space over a year ago and just like us is a work in progress.
You can find my gallery on Facebook under Cariboo Murals & Fine Art and on Instagram Maureen Wheeler Artist.
My Art is always on display at the studio /gallery Spirit Square Studios 375 Reid Street, Quesnel BC, open by appointment.
Lesley Kuhn
Supporting Member – Prince George, BC
Lesley has spent the majority of her life here in the Prince George area after growing up in Edmonton AB. Inspiration comes from the play of light and shadows as two elements of painting that she finds exciting and continues to work to apply them to her paintings. After a few years of working exclusively in acrylics, she has transitioned to oils and is enjoying the depth of colour. Lesley enjoys learning new techniques through occasionally classes at Two Rivers Gallery and private lessons and a variety of blogs and YouTube’s.
Instagram handle: BrushWithSoul
Megan Long
Social Media / ArtAvenue
Active Member – Quesnel, BC
Instagram: @paintingalong
Megan has always had a love and appreciation for art. A chance encounter with a Tom Thomson print in a local antique store 20+ years ago was the beginning of her artistic journey. Canada’s Group of Seven was a new find for Megan and she wanted to learn more. Art history courses at the local college confirmed that further education would be geared towards art making.
Drawing and watercolour classes and workshops were the beginning but once she tried acrylic paint, she had found her medium. Megan was completely hooked by the vibrant colours as well as the versatility of the medium.
Megan considers herself a self-taught artist and works primarily from her own photos, with brush on canvas, expressing her stylized interpretation of the beauty of the landscape. Megan was born and raised in Quesnel and spent many enjoyable summers camping, fishing, and exploring the Cariboo Chilcotin as a child and again as an adult with her own family. Megan and her husband are avid hikers, providing an endless supply of inspirational material from explorations of BC and Alberta including Vancouver Island, the Canadian Rockies, and the Okanagan through to Tumbler Ridge so far.
Anne I. Moody
Active Member – Vanderhoof, BC
Anne works in acrylics and oils, en plein air when possible, and in her studio from reference photos she has taken during her travels. Her subject matter includes ranch scenes, landscapes, seascapes and portraits.
Anne Moody is an award-winning artist, with works held in private collections in Canada, Europe and the US. Her work has also beenfeatured as jacket covers for several books.
Although primarily self-taught, Anne’s art training has included courses at the fine arts departments of the Universities of BC and Saskatchewan as well as many workshops sponsored by the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA), Canada’s oldest artistic organization, of which she is also an active member.
Anne’s academic background (geography/ ecology), and career as an environmental scientist, have taken her to a wide variety of remote and spectacular locations western
Canada as well as to international locations. Her personal and professional travels in turn have inspired many of her paintings.
Although art and science may seem widely divided, both require keen observation and good interpretive skills. She lives by the motto “Study the science of art and the art of science” (Leonardo da Vinci).
Anne and her family have lived in and loved the interior of BC for many years. After a short hiatus in Victoria, the Moodys are back in the interior, delighted to live on a large rural acreage outside of Vanderhoof.
Jeanette Orydzuk
Treasurer
Active Member – Prince George, BC
Jeanette Orydzuk was born and raised in Prince George and while she lived elsewhere on occasion, she always ended up coming home. She considers herself a Northern person and enjoys all seasons, including winter. She worked as an art educator for many years while continuing her own practice and participating in some memorable artistic activities in Prince George: including the Spirit Bear Project of 2006. Today she is happy to be spending her time wholly engaged in making art.
Jeanette’s primary motivation comes from the never-ending challenges that making art provides, allowing her to continue to be a student in her life. She is working with acrylics right now, but is always open to picking up oils, getting out the graphite or soft pastels, adding collage to her work or taking some time to make prints. Her great joys are adding wax or fabric to my work. She allows herself to be versatile because it helps her feel alive while creating and opens her up to ideas for more work.
Making art helps Jeanette know herself. She uses her work to understand who she is and her place in the world. She works mostly from memory and imagination to achieve a feeling tone of an image rather than a representational one. Her life is celebrated in her art: events, travel, friends, and family. Every piece is influenced by her emotional connection to the subject.
Like many artists Jeanette is in awe of and influenced by nature. She very much enjoys getting outdoors to plein air paint. Working representationally with the scenery, the bugs and the breeze, are all part of the challenge that she welcomes.
Fred Paulson, AFCA
Quesnel, BC
Fred was born and raised in British Columbia. He was introduced to making art in his primary school days by Canadian Artist Edna McPhail in Dawson Creek, BC, and has continued to create throughout his entire life. He considers himself to be a “Self-taught” Artist. However, his formal training includes Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC, and Douglas College in Surrey, BC.
Fred has worked in many media over the years, including graphite, oil, watercolour, pastel, acrylic, and coloured pencil, depicting many subjects from landscapes and seascapes to still lives and florals, as well as abstracts.
He has been an “Active” Member of The Federation of Canadian Artists for many years. His work has been featured in solo and group shows. His coloured pencil work was displayed in an article that appeared in the Artist’s Magazine.
Fred has lived in many parts of British Columbia, including the Fraser Valley, North Coast, Peace region and the Interior of the province. Currently, his home is in Quesnel, BC.
His work can be found in private and corporate collections in various parts of the world, such as Canada, the USA, Europe and even Australia.
Nicole Best Rudderham
Active Member – Prince Rupert, BC
Nicole always having resided in the Canadian Pacific North Coast paints rich color, contrasts in light, shadow or color in all her work. Her artwork captures the vivid greens, blue skies, and wildlife the North is noted for. She believes art should show the passion with which it was created with.
“Art should be something you look at to enjoy and feel great about having!”
Nicole uses and is proficiant in many mediums and crates art work that will ‘take you away!’.
Her search for new subject matter is an ongoing focus, and she lets the image dictate to her the art medium which would suit it best.
She has a long history of working artistically and painting since childhood. Initially learning painting and drawing from her mother, she continually has taken workshops from other accomplished artists. She has since been teaching all ages through school instruction and holding workshops for over twenty years. After recieving honors and a bursary from high school she attended Arizona State University, taking Life Studies, design and classical dance. She has also worked with fabrics creating home fashions, while also performing and teaching ballet and modern dance. Later her work led her to a visual display position for the Hudson’s Bay Company; dressing mannequins, creating sign work, and displaying merchandise. She currently still designs commercial store window displays, commercial floral arrangements, and indoor hotel seasonal displays as well as planning and decorating for numerous weddings, and even cooking (one of her other passions…) for social events up to 50 people.
Nicole works in her private studio creating works from small to over 8ft high as well as creating murals for outdoor spaces. Her two recent large 4ft w x 8ft h paintings commissioned by the local Prince Rupert Catholic Church are now hanging within the church.
Nicole’s paintings have been shown in solo and group shows since 1976 at the age of 12, at the Museum of Northern B.C. in Prince Rupert B.C., and several joint and public shows; including two joint exhibits with Abouriginal Tahltan Carver, Dempsey Bob; exhibited in a group show in Armstrong B.C., in Vancouver B.C. with The Federation of Canadian Artists, and also with the B.C. Festival of The Arts; and other varied Canadian associations.
She currently continues her work in Prince Rupert in her down town studio creating original and commissioned pieces that find homes worldwide.
Micheline Snively
Active Member – Mackenzie, BC
Micheline Snively is a landscape artist from Mackenzie, BC working in oil paints. Her paintings are inspired by the landscape surrounding Mackenzie and the regional area. Micheline obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta in the early 1990’s followed up with a diplomas in forest technology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Over the years she has remained creative with making jewellery, drawing, linocut printing and painting, in 2020 she made the switch to a full time artist. Since then expressing the beauty of the Mackenzie area in paint and experiencing the connection that past and current residents of the area have had to her paintings has been both fulfilling and motivating.
Wendy Stevenson
Active Member – Prince George, BC
Northern artist Wendy Stevenson describes her art as reflections of many years of experiences. She creates from her studio located in Prince George British Columbia.
Wendy paints primarily in oils and acrylics, but has played with various other mediums. She’s an avid photographer and turns many of her images into paintings. The skills and techniques she demonstrates with her camera transfer to her paintings as vivid stories. She paints plein air as well as in studio. Many of her paintings are reminiscent of the impressionist painters, full of texture and thick brushwork. Some of her favourite subjects are landscapes, flowers, grasses and animals. She travels throughout British Columbia with her camera close by and a tote of painting supplies always accessible.
Ms Stevenson has been active in promoting arts in the northern area. She has volunteered and sat on the executive of a local artist group for many years. Her art work has been displayed in various communities throughout British Columbia and she holds memberships in several galleries.
Karma Vance
Secretary
Active Member – Prince George, BC
karmavance@shaw.ca
Karma describes her painting style as Abstract Impressionism. She strives to capture movement and story in her imagery. What makes her work unique is her ability to portray energy and emotion, even in still lives. “I want you to glide on broad strokes and bask in the lush colours and organic rhythms.”
Karma is mostly a studio artist and her themes include nature, figures, still lives and abstracts. She also a summer time plein air enthusiast. A sense of of joyfulness is imparted by her loose broad strokes and heightened colours.
She constantly challenges her understanding of ‘painting’ and explores ways that paint, strokes and marks can represent effects such as light, movement and emotion. Karma works with a strong underpainting then works with various ways to interrupt it. “I want the viewer’s eye to dance and work rather than offer a perfect image.”
Karma Vance is a long time Prince George resident. She has been an artist and educator for 30 years. Karma was adept at incorporating art skills as the core of all subject areas. She has developed, published and taught workshops on ‘Sketchbook Phonics’. Karma has led art workshops throughout District 57, Two Rivers Gallery and Studio 2880.
Karma is a graduate of the Visual and Performing Arts in the Ed. faculty of UBC, Double Arts Major. Here she studied with professors such as Gordon Smith, Sam Black and James Mcdonald and participated in many group exhibitions. Karma worked with James Macdonald, Professor Emeritus, at the Jericho School For the Blind devising an art program based on personal imagery for the visually impaired.
“Art is a feeling, a shout, a murmur. It’s a gesture of love and communication…no one has to understand it.”
Lesley White, SFCA
Prince George, BC
Lesley White (nee Milne) was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and spent her early years on her grandparents farm in Oak Lake. Her work is a collection of witnessed or experienced events in the life of the cowboy, the daily challenges faced, the physical labour, connection to family and land.
Her rural beginnings connect her to the core of this lifestyle and although life’s path took her on an urban journey for a time, the feel, smell, and vision of ranching was always with her. It was those senses that eventually pulled her back to her roots.
Lesley holds a deep respect and admiration for people who have chosen this tough but rewarding way of life and hopes that she can contribute to its preservation by eternalizing it through her work as a visual artist.
Time spent in the saddle and painting outdoors are the two main methods used to gather photographic references and to paint colour studies in order to later compose a painting in her studio. Experimentation with various mediums has resulted in her choosing oil paint to best express the excitement and passion she feels toward her subject. Lesley continues to learn and grow through the use of books, workshops, and by simply putting miles on the brush every day.
Rick Mintz
Supporting Member – Prince George, BC
Rick started painting as a retirement hobby, after a few pieces of art he decided to take it a step farther and enrolled in an art class held by Betty Kovasic where he learned different techniques in Acrylic and Watercolour.
In 2019 Rick started a fund raising project, benefiting The B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation, painting old buildings on the Cariboo Highway and making them into a 2020 calendar titled Past Glory of the Cariboo Highway. This went over very well and he continued for 2021 with artwork of B.C. birds. For the 2022 calendar he has selected old vehicles found in fields, forests and backyards. Most of his art is done from photographs he and friends have taken.
In 2019,2020 and 2021 Rick took part in the Williams Lake Art Walk displaying acrylic and water colour paintings as well as Pencil and Charcoal drawings.
Rick can be found at Omineca Art Centre every Friday as a volunteer and has showed his art there as well.