School of Art Alumna Ekene Emeka Maduka carves a personal signature out of broad social themes.

Young Winnipeg painters are having an exciting moment.

For the past six weeks or so, Dee Barsy’s signature aqua blues have washed over the 300,000 people who daily visit Toronto’s Union Station, which is decorated with a dozen of her bird-themed murals, buoying Toronto Blue Jays fans during the World Series.

Last month, artist, curator and writer Chukwudubem Ukaigwe was shortlisted to represent the Prairies region for the Sobey Art Award 2025 — Canada’s largest prize for visual artists, which will be handed out on Saturday.

Ukaigwe is perhaps best recognized for his paintings, often colourful to the point of psychedelic while refined in their details and lifelikeness, blending elements of realism, pop art and surrealism.

The artist is among a small group of artists around 30 or under, many of whom went to art school together at the University of Manitoba, and who may appear — at least at first glance — to be working in similar directions.

Two others are painters Bria Fernandes and Ekene Emeka Maduka, who sat down to discuss their work in a public conversation at the University of Winnipeg in mid-October.

Fernandes opened by discussing a piece on which she had collaborated with Maduka in art school in an obvious Renaissance style, before moving on to more recent works.

One of these appeared at the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Threads of Kin and Belonging: A Trinnipeg Live Mixtape Project show last year, while others were the basis for Gallery 1C03’s Things Left Unsaid exhibit, which ran in September and October.