Leona F. Brown

Leona swam in the Grand Cenote of Mexico, danced the Flamenco in the cellars of Spain & walked the Great Wall of China – absorbing the culture, memories & experiences that have contributed to the extensive visual vocabulary that is expressed in her art.

“My art is the vehicle that allows me to express that which cannot be put to words.” Leona paints from the soul & finds that the process of painting is important to her whether it be representational or abstract.

Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Leona developed a strong interest in art at an early age. Primarily self-taught in watercolour painting techniques, Leona extended her learning over the early part of her career by taking professional courses with many well-known artists. Her formal education was at the University of Manitoba where she received her BEd & the University of Saskatchewan Art studies & art History courses.

Leona’s has both exhibited & taught extensively both in Canada & internationally. 

Her work can be found in both corporate & private collections located throughout Canada, the USA, Singapore, China, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Japan, and Finland 

Over the course of her career, Leona has been recognized with many Awards both domestically and internationally.

A finalist in the Women in the Arts Exhibition held by Artrom Gallery in Rome, Italy, Leona’s painting was one of only 12 selected from Canada to be represented in Fabriano, Italy 2016. She has been included in many articles and art books, with her latest being quoted in “Bloom” by Janice Mason Steeves in 2024.

“Ultimately it’s what the painting says that is important. Not necessarily in the sense of a “message” rather a language understood in the heart & soul, generated there.”

CHARLIE JOHNSTON / C5Charlie

Charlie Johnston, aka ‘C5 Charlie’ is a Winnipeg based muralist/ sculptor who has been creating public art for 35 years . He creates poetic visual narratives for the growth of  collective consciousness, remixing archetypes and genres to create new perspectives on the human experience.

Before he became C5, Charlie started his journey as an artist in Manitoba’s Interlake region; a young illustrator/ sculptor in the realm of comic/ fantasy art and portraiture. He studied Fine Art in Winnipeg, evolving his representational/surreal style and expanding his horizons. The scope of his work grew after a decade as a billboard painter. With an expanded sense of scale and techniques, a new identity began to form for Charlie.

It was in this time that he became ‘C5’, wrote his manifesto and integrated a diverse range of stylistic motifs, materials and concepts into a new form and began to express it through a series of monumental murals and sculptures that began in Winnipeg, and have since spread out across Canada, into the U.S.A. and abroad. From the epic Strike mural in Winnipeg and the railroad length ‘Come Home’ mural in Newfoundland, to the10 story wolf mural and sculptures in Thompson, to the 100 foot tall Peanut Farmer silo mural in south Georgia, C5 Charlie has become a creator of icons.

During this critical development, Charlie never stopped working on his personal themes of irony and self-realization, while collaborating with communities to co-create larger visions. Conceptual multi-tasking has enabled C5 to fuel each creative act with a sense of freshness and vitality, and the artistic cross-pollination has yielded something more.

Although C5 Charlie’s self-incorporation has never involved graffiti, he has found himself aligned on a parallel track with the current street art movement. His experiences with mural art, sign writing, sculpture, casting, comic art, digital and ‘old school’ traditional art have fused together in a similar hybrid fashion in his evolving role as a Canadian public artist. The ‘weapon of mass creation’ ever strives to be a force of nature, in service of nature