Booth College and the Salvation Army Ethics Centre said goodbye to a longstanding friend this week.  GERALD FOLKERTS was born in Vancouver and graduated from Dordt College (Iowa) in 1980 with an education degree in Fine Arts and moved to Winnipeg to begin a teaching career that would span eighteen years. He later left the classroom to devote more time to painting works that continually invite viewers to reflect, and sometimes wrestle, with allusive, suggestion-rich and deeply relevant images. Calvin Seerveld (Senior Member Emeritus in Philosophical Aesthetics Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, ON) says, "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  participated in both solo and group exhibitions in North America and was an award-winner in IMAGO’s 30th Anniversary National Juried Competition and Exhibition as well as being the recipient of the First Award in several Manitoba Society of Artists Annual Juried Exhibitions. He  served as juror for various exhibitions, led workshops, and was a featured presenter at art conferences and schools in Canada and the USA. Gerald was a past-president of the Manitoba Society of Artists and worked out of his renovated attic studio in his Winnipeg home.

In September 2008 Gerald Folkerts was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.  On February 1, 2009, some 150 people gathered at Winnipeg’s Outworks Gallery to mark the formal closing of an exhibit of the work of artist Gerald Folkerts entitled 'Unfinished Business'.  While exhibit openings are more or less the norm in the art world, a formal closing is a bit unusual.  In the case of Unfinished Business, it was all the more unusual, in that the closing was marked by prayer, music, and a meditative address built around readings from the Book of Psalms.   Later in the fall a group of friends and supporters came together to begin work on mounting an exhibit of his work.  Defying all expectation, Gerald was sufficiently strong not only to attend the exhibit but also to speak at both the official opening and this closing recorded by friends at St. Benedict's Table.

To view Gerald's own website click here.
Much of this text was borrowed from the invisible dignity website.  

Rest In Peace, dear friend.