Home, screen-printed home Artist's bold, colourful slices of Winnipeg past and present are instantly recognizable to people who live here and others who just left their hearts here By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Apr. 10, 2021

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This article was published 10/04/2021 (1924 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Good news for ex-Winnipeggers living in Toronto who haven’t been able to get back lately owing to… you-know-what: that city’s Canvas Gallery now carries the work of Eric Ouimet, a silkscreen artist whose creations are often as Winnipeg-centric as a Sals Nip or slice of Jeanne’s cake.

Megan Less, Canvas Gallery’s director, grew up in Silver Heights. The first time she laid eyes on one of Ouimet’s pieces, it brought back “all the memories,” she says.

“My friend, an interior designer, sent me a shot of Eric’s Winnipeg airport scene, Departures; she loved the clean lines and I loved that it was the airport,” Less says, referring to a contemporary-looking print depicting a stretch limo dropping travellers off at the old terminal, since razed but fondly remembered for its modernist classic design.

According to Less — who, despite leaving the city in 1979, still carries a torch for Assiniboine Park, Old Dutch chips and smoked goldeye — people familiar with Confusion Corner aren’t the only ones attracted to Ouimet’s compositions. His bold, limited-run prints, which combine photography, computer graphics and hand-drawn illustrations, capture images that are relatable whether you’re from Manitoba’s capital or not, she says.

“They are beautifully done. Eric uses strong colour, keen design sense and is meticulous in his renderings. It all adds up to an amazing piece of art.”

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Ouimet, 39, grew up south of Ste. Agathe on an acreage that has been in his family for over a century. Know that small church situated on a parcel of land that divides Highway 75, he asks? (Who doesn’t?) That’s right by their place, he says.

Rarely able to hang out with buddies after school because of where he lived, he spent most of his spare time sketching; just not the sort of things — cows, barns, tractors — you might expect from a farm kid.

“I was always fascinated by architecture, and by the time I was six or seven, I was already doing blueprints of imaginary houses, all these complex, three-dimensional drawings,” he says, seated in the living room of his home in Grande Pointe, which he shares with his husband Steve and their 10-year-old Shih Tzu Pretzel.

“My older brother was a big tech guy — there was always a computer in the house — and when the first generation of Photoshop came out (in 1990), that’s when I really got the bug.”

Ouimet, the youngest of three siblings, is convinced he would have studied architecture at university if it hadn’t been for a Grade 12 career day, when people from various professions were invited to his high school in St. Jean Baptiste to discuss what they did for a living. A person introduced as an architect was so dry in his presentation — “just a lot of blah, blah, blah” — that Ouimet switched gears soon after, enrolling in a new communications and multimedia course being offered at St. Boniface College.

He landed work upon completing the two-year program, first at a Winnipeg ad agency and later at CBC, where he has spent the last 20 years as an award-winning, motion graphics designer. Out of curiosity, he took an introductory screen printing class at Martha Street Studio in the Exchange District 15 years ago.

He fell in love with the medium, but because it required “a ton” of equipment to do properly, he didn’t pursue it any further. At least not until he and Steve purchased a two-storey, open-concept home in 2011 and began hunting around for art to dress up the bare walls.

“If you have $10,000 to spend you can buy whatever you like, right? But the problem we were having was finding stuff we enjoyed that was decently priced,” he says. “That’s kind of when I thought maybe that was a void I could fill by producing attractive-looking art that was also affordable.”

Taking their time, the two built a dedicated artist’s studio in their unfinished basement. Like he mentioned, screen printing, which most people he talks to associate solely with Andy Warhol or T-shirts, involves a considerable amount of space. In addition to a base table, he needed room for presses, mesh screens, block stencils, a drying station, not to mention shelves loaded to the hilt with jars of acrylic ink, his preferred application.

By 2016, everything was good to go.

“Write what you know” is an adage often employed by wordsmiths and, initially, Ouimet adopted the same approach in regard to his art. Almost all his early creations, including ones dubbed Working Late, Family Farm and Good Day’s Work, depict slice-of-life moments from his childhood. He chuckles pointing out one called Hockey Season, of a kid lugging his equipment into the “Arène.” While he doesn’t consider himself a hockey player in the least, he did play for a few years, quickly realizing if you wanted to make friends in Ste. Agathe you had better be chasing a puck around the ice during the winter. On the plus-side, he always won the most gentlemanly player award, “retiring” from the game without having thrown a single bodycheck, he says, breaking into a wide grin.

Eric Ouimet Studio, the name of his biz, made its official debut at an art show held in St. Boniface in 2017. He spent a fair bit of time that evening explaining the ins and outs of his craft, so much so that he later posted a few how-to videos on his website, www.ericouimet.com, to give curious parties an idea of all that is involved. (If you’re unfamiliar, a webpage called Screen Printing 101 defines the multi-step process as “a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of polyester or other fine mesh.”)

Since that first show Ouimet has kept his eyes open for potential subjects whenever he’s driving around the city and province, be it families lining up for ice cream at the Bridge Drive-In, recreated in a work called Spring Pilgrimage, people making their way up the steps of the Centennial Concert Hall (Night at the Ballet) or a quiet lake scene (Hecla Island Lighthouse). (Our favourite? One called Royal Rafters that riffs on the love-it-or-hate-it, five-by-seven metre painting of the Queen that hung in the old Winnipeg Arena for 20 years.)

“It was always interesting when I was able to do shows, pre-COVID,” he goes on. “People would look at, say, Backyard Campout and immediately connect with one another by swapping stories about pitching a tent in their backyard when they were a kid, too. I love when something of mine invokes memories.”

The same goes for one of his latest pieces, Spiral Sanctuary. No sooner had he posted a shot of the finished product, a portrait of Norwood’s Precious Blood Roman Catholic Church, known for its unique, corkscrew-shaped roof, on Instagram than someone left a message reading, “Guy and I got married there on May 17, 1969.”

Through his website, Ouimet has shipped his works — each measuring 18 inches by 30 inches and ranging in price from $175 to $250 — to customers all over the world, including Germany, France and Australia. Closer to home, Pulse Gallery at The Forks carries his prints, all numbered and signed by the artist himself. Also, he recently published a coffee-table book of his work to date, simply titled Eric Ouimet. The 54-page tome can be purchased at Chapters St. Vital or online.

In his head he’d like to release one new piece a month, he says when asked about future plans. That may seem like a lofty goal but when it comes to running out of ideas for fresh creations, no, he doesn’t expect that to happen any time soon.

“Ideas are something I’ve never struggled with, I always have way more than I’ll ever have time to get to. Even when we’re brainstorming at work, I’m always bringing new ideas to the table, each and every day. Whether they’re all good or not, well, that isn’t always for me to decide.”

Oh, in case you’re wondering why old, Winnipeg International Airport scenes like the one that caught that Toronto gallerist’s eye show up again and again in his work — OK, parents might have to explain the concept of pay phones in one called Arrivals to their children — that’s easy. He and his Vancouver-born spouse met on a flight originating from there, after they ended up being seated next to each other.

“I’ve gotta say, I’ve had lots of bad luck with people I’ve sat next to on planes. I guess he was the great equalizer,” Ouimet says with a laugh.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca