Gerald Folkerts
www.cardus.ca/contributors/gfolkerts/
A graduate of Dordt College (Iowa), Gerald Folkerts moved to Winnipeg to begin a teaching career that would span eighteen years. Since then he has left the classroom to devote more time to his art. Dr. Calvin Seerveld, Senior Member Emeritus in Philosophical Aesthetics Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto has said, "Folkerts has the wisdom to let his Christian faith subtly percolate in the spirit of his painterly art by showing compassion for the problematic figures he treats."
Gerald has participated in solo and group exhibitions in North America and was an award-winner in IMAGO's 30th Anniversary National Juried Competition. He has served as juror for various exhibitions, led workshops, and has been a featured presenter at art conferences and schools in Canada and the USA. Gerald is a past-president of the Manitoba Society of Artists and works out of his renovated attic studio in his Winnipeg home.
Gerald's present work Head Over Heels explores the lives of those whom we most often tend to ignore, or at least, overlook—the homeless, the poor, the sick, the young, the aged. Much is revealed about the journey and the roads traveled through these portraits of feet and faces. The stories seem worth telling.
"Gerald's work either disturbs my complacency, or arrests me in the midst of my frantic doings." —Steve Bell, Canadian singer/songwriter
