Impressions of Manitoba

Description “The desire as a child to take a piece of paper and a pencil and go to the outskirts of the village and try to draw what my eyes focused on, seems to never have left me. And as we left the Netherlands to settle in Manitoba, Canada, that same desire soon resurfaced. But I discovered that there is so much more to it than just drawing what you see. Who lived in that place, and what happened to them? The old Smit place in Birds Hill where the elderly Mrs. Bernice Cornier invited me in one day and told me that the stairway to the upper level came from a boat her father had built way back when and how he, as a captain, had been among the first to sail the McKenzie to the North. I remember well the stories of the senior Stevens couple in Lake Francis about him fighting with the Allied Forces, including a hair-raising tale about coming down a mountain in Italy after losing the brakes. They graciously allowed me to do my sketching in their old wood-heated kitchen. Endless are the stories of the subjects I sketched and that, in themselves, made it worthwhile. So, look and dream.” – Marten Posthumus