Reviews of “My Art, My World”

by

Mark Winkler

Reviews of “My Art, My World”

Breakfast Television
Citytv

Author and artist Rita Winkler created “My Art, My World,” a book showing how she sees life through her unique paintings. Inspiring throughout. A remarkable young lady.

The Morning Show
Global News

Rita Winkler shares her book and unique vision of the world through her beautiful paintings to show that her disability doesn’t define her.

Susan Glass
Vice-chair of the National Arts Centre
Board of Trustees

Endearing, engaging and truly remarkable. Rita’s art work is truly beautiful but it is her insight that adds special depth to her paintings. Her spirit shines through.

The Globe and Mail Review
Kid’s Book Gift Guide

Rita’s world is vibrant and colourful. She also has Down Syndrome, but that doesn’t stop her from holding down a job, taking yoga and folk dancing. By using her art to capture her world, Rita’s creativity helps to destigmatize disability in this joyous celebration of the power of art.

Larry Swartz
Educational Consultant

Rita, a young woman living with Down syndrome takes readers into her world through vivid paintings and words. Rita enthusiastically lives each day fully, taking yoga and folk dancing classes, participating in drama and music programs and working at a university coffee. Rita’s joyous art and inspiring story certainly warms the heart and brings smiles to any reader.

Fold Kids
Book of the Month Picks

My Art, My World is a picture book that gives readers an insight into the life of Rita Winkler, a young woman with Down syndrome, through her greatest passion: art! This book is the Book-of-the-Month pick for November because it’s a fun reading experience. It’s great to feel the enthusiasm Winkler has for visual art and writing about her life through that makes it all the more interesting. It’s especially fantastic to have a creator with Down syndrome publish a book for kids and hopefully, more of these will emerge as a result. 

CBC Book Review
Canadian Picture Book to Watch

Rita Winkler, a young woman living with Down syndrome, shows us the world as she sees it through her art: a place full of joy and colour.Rita: Do we have any boxes?Mom: Sure, Why do you need a box?Rita: My teacher says I have to think outside the box!Approaching her daily life with enthusiasm and a dry sense of humour, Rita rides public transit to her job working at a university coffee shop. She takes yoga and folk dance classes and enjoys drama and music at a day program, and she continues to practice using sign language. Rita’s great passion is making art. Here she shows her love for the world in fun and beautiful works of art. (From Second Story Press)

Cindy Love of Books
Book Reviewer

Today I wanted to review and spotlight My Art, My World by Rita Winkler because it’s such a beautiful special picture book that I think everyone should pick up and read.My Art, My World features all of Rita’s artwork and photos. Rita loves to make art and each art piece or photo accompanies what she has written. Reading this picture book you can see that Rita keeps herself busy with not only her artwork but she has job working in a coffee shop, she hangs out with her friends, does dance classes, and yoga.Rita is a young woman living with Down Syndrome and My Art, My World is all about seeing the world as she does. It’s a place full of joy, color, and delight when you spend it with friends and family.I really enjoyed reading Rita’s words and looking over her artwork. Seeing all the hard work that she puts into it. This is truly a special picture book.

Brenda Boreham
Canadian Teacher

My Art, My World is a collection of colourful works of art accompanied by descriptions and observations written by Rita Winkler, a young woman living with Down syndrome. Rita lives with her mother and works at a coffee shop at the University of Toronto. She also attends the Dani-Toronto day program. She enjoys her yoga and dance classes as well as listening to music and watching movies. Rita’s passion for life and great sense of humour shine throughout the book and will appeal to children and adults alike.

Classroom Connections: This book would make a great springboard to discussions about the unique capabilities of people with Down syndrome and their lived experiences. Reading Strategies that would lend themselves well to this book are making connections, questioning, inferring, and transforming.

Catherine-Laura Dunnington
Pre-School Teacher

In My Art, My World, the reader is treated to Rita Winkler’s insightful dialogue about her days, interests and artwork. A young woman living with Down syndrome, Winkler’s dry sense of humor will greatly appeal to children. The publishers of her work have respected her unique voice, and the resulting book is at once charming and fresh.Art remains the unifying thread connecting Winkler’s experiences and grounding the tales about what her life is like. Each vignette about Winkler’s life is accompanied by her bold artwork. Using a variety of media, Winkler portrays her friends, the streets of New York where her Uncle Mark lives, the fireworks on New Year’s Eve and the bus she takes to her job at a Toronto coffee shop.The overarching narrative of the text is quite simple; this book is a lens into one young woman’s experience of living with Down syndrome and navigating her world. Her wry and cheery voice easily reflects her joyful life. The book offers children a look at someone’s life, someone who may at first seem very different from them. While My Art, My World could be particularly useful in classroom settings, it would equally benefit everyone building an inclusive children’s book collection for the young readers in their lives.

KIrkus Book Review
Starred Review

Winkler introduces herself to readers by her first name, Rita, and a double visual: A painted self-portrait and a photograph of herself holding it. “Do you think it looks like me?” she asks. This painting happens to be abstract, but as the narrative progresses, Winkler’s artistic styles display a sophisticated level of variety. A sun and moon form opposite halves of the same sphere; a lake features realistic composition with textured brush strokes; a glimmering winter landscape shows hillsides with stark trees, soft snowflakes, and a yellow-pink sky. Cut paper forms the blocks of a big city with sharp angles and lines. Winkler has Down syndrome, unmentioned by the text and art but noted on the back cover. Her handwritten words “I’m Rita” show up twice; her handwriting also appears in a spirited note she leaves by the phone to discourage “pesky telemarketers”: “we are not home Leve us alone Thank You.” Winkler’s humor shines through in a speculation that perhaps some fish she sees while at her cashier’s job in a coffee house—fish carried by a customer in a baggie—might come from the same lake Winkler visits and might recognize her from there. For its art enthusiasm and stimulating variation of visual style, pair this with Angela Johnson and E.B. Lewis’ Lily Brown’s Paintings (2007).

Bright Buddies
Rita Winkler · September 25, 2023

Rita Winkler is a young woman with Down syndrome. She was born in Calgary, Alberta, and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. Rita works in the Coffee Shed in New College at the University of Toronto, part of the Common Ground Cooperative, a social purpose enterprise. Rita enjoys social media, listening to music, watching movies, writing newsletter articles, and being with friends and family in her free time. The foundation for Rita’s art journey was laid by the excellent art program at DANI-Toronto. Rita’s mom, Helen, who previously had no training in art, is Rita’s art facilitator. She devises adaptive techniques to allow Rita to overcome disability-related barriers to the art creation process. Rita, Helen, and her Uncle Mark Winkler from Kenora collaborated on a children’s book, My Art, My World, recently published by Second Story Press. It tells the story of Rita’s day-to-day life through her art and offers the message of inclusion. The book has brought Rita’s art to the attention of the greater community who say that Rita’s art makes them smile. This alone proves the benefit of sharing art created by people of all abilities with the world.

Helen K.
Canlit for Little Canadians

This is not a story. This is a life. It’s a life well-lived by Rita Winkler, a young woman with Down Syndrome. She lives it with colour, with activity, and with heart. And she tells her life through her art, hence My Art, My World.

Rita introduces herself through a self-portrait and then discusses the making of her art: when, where, why. She reveals her activities like taking the bus, clearly the TTC, to her job at a coffee shop, and participating in dance class and yoga. She recounts anecdotes of seeing fish in a bag, dealing with pesky telemarketers and visiting her uncle in New York City. And she always represents it in her art.

But more than just capturing a moment in time, Rita Winkler expresses herself through her artwork. She recognizes how her art changes through the seasons, and how the season makes her feel. From summer flowers and Halloween, through Remembrance Day and New Year’s Eve, Rita Winkler tells us how she feels through her art which is often, though not limited to, paint.

With a boldness of intent and line, Rita Winkler invites us to meet her and enter her world, one of artistic temperament, not of disability or limitations. It’s a testament to what is and not what isn’t and that message of acceptance is paramount to the verve in Rita Winkler’s life and My Art, My World.

Ruth Bowiec
Kenora Miner and News

MY ART, MY WORLD IS A RIVETING READ

Rita’s capturing her captivating life experiences in her own wonderful world of word and art will be a fantastic read for all ages and not just for people with Down syndrome. It contains delightful pictures of Rita’s own artwork demonstrating not only proficiency in writing but also drawing and sketching. The text is a collaborative effort between her mother Helen Winkler and her uncle, Mark Winkler and dedicated support from her sisters Leora and Rachel.

She was born with Down syndrome and sadly her father, Jay, passed away in Calgary when Rita was just 14 and her mom moved to Toronto in 2003. Rita is now 34.Her tome came to fruition back when the annual bowling fundraiser for Rita’s program Common Ground Co-operative had to be cancelled due to Covid. The event was sponsored in memory of Rita’s father. Her uncle, Mark, came up with the idea of creating a self-published book of Rita’s artwork to assist the fundraising, which came to the attention of Second Story Press.Each page of this fascinating book will have the reader boarding public transit with Rita to her job at Coffee Shed becoming proficient with the cash register and states, “I never give the wrong change. Well, almost never.” You will see how intellectual Rita feels about winter and my favourite is her take on those telemarketers, (she claims they are pesky and interrupt her when she is busy).Her involvement with DANI, a Toronto organization creating opportunities for adults with physical and/or cognitive challenges enabling them to be very active as members of their community. Rita also learned the skill of folk dancing. The mom/daughter duet performs a participatory chair dance every Sunday for Jake’s Jam, an open mic Zoom group where musicians with and without disabilities perform. She enjoys watercolour classes and when one views her art in her book will realize how magical her watercolour paintings are. In high school, Rita joined a choir where she, along with others, performed the sign language version of songs while the other students sang. She continues to enjoy sign language. She keeps fit doing yoga but as she says, “I love everything I do but most of all I love making my art.”

The reader will also love her artwork i.e. how she visualizes the rising of the sun and the moon peeking through her bedroom window at night time; her views of New York City when she visits uncle Mark and her majestic memorializing seasonal flowers in her bright and vivid colours. What caught my attention is Rita’s colourful pictures of how she portrays people and is so happy they don’t all look the same referring to her capturing her friends Carolyn and Sammy. You will be impressed with Rita’s inspiring words and paintings. In addition to creating paintings, Rita loves to make birthday cards and paint birthday cakes for everyone she knows. As a reviewer of her book, I appreciate all of her varied activities but for some reason, I adore her snowman’s face which I think resembles a wonderful, luscious fancy decorated marshmallow. On that sweet note, I will end my review by saying, “I have fallen in love with Rita’s stamina, fortitude, uniqueness and her wondrous view of this wonderful world.”My Art My World, published by Second Story Press will be available at Elizabeth Campbell Books and our Lake of the Woods Museum. Proceeds will go towards organizations that assist people with intellectual disabilities.

Orly Zebak
Editor of NIV Magazine

THE UNBRIDLED JOY IN RITA WINKLER’S WORLD AND ART

Rita Winkler holds up one end of her painting, and her mother, Helen, the other. Their screen becomes almost entirely awash in green, blue, and yellow watercolours with three different socks. Each sock is outlined and highlighted with thick black lines to mark their distinct patterns. The first sock is striped, the second, sparingly cross-hatched, and the third are polka-dotted. And peeking out from each side of their screen are Helen and Rita’s smiles. Their expressions are matched not only by me, but by Rita’s uncle, Mark; joining in from New York. Winkler, who has Down syndrome, created the painting to celebrate World Down Syndrome Day (which coincidentally fell on the day of our interview). Helen remarked that the unmatched socks symbolize the unmatched chromosome Trisomy 21. And to show support to the Down syndrome community everyone is encouraged to wear unmatched socks on the day. Witnessing family members beaming with pride, while Rita showed off her artistic spirit, captured how the family is always working to uplift, amplify, and celebrate Rita’s imagination. It was this moment that made me change the course of the article. Initially, Rita’s upcoming picture book My Art, My World, published by Second Story Press, was going to take centre stage. Every year, the Winkler’s sponsor the bowl-a-thon at Common Ground Co-operative in memory of Rita’s father. Due to COVID-19 the event was unable to take place, and Mark decided to make his niece’s pictures into a book and donate a portion of the proceeds. When Helen sent Mark a detailed biography of Rita, he decided there should be text to accompany Rita’s images. Coincidentally, the sister of one of the owners and publishers of Second Story Press knew of the book and connected with the Winkler’s. Getting the publishing house involved helped finesse the relationship between Rita’s words and her paintings.  Come October 19, 2021, you’ll be able to flip through Rita’s paintings and illustrations that, along with the text, let you in on her frank observations. You’ll see her take public transit by herself to her job at Coffee Shed in New College at the University of Toronto, part of Common Ground. You’ll see the cubism inspired portraits of her friends Sammy and Caroline, and you’ll find out how Rita feels about winter, and telemarketers. The text is sprinkled with dry humour, but as Mark and Helen made clear, that sometimes it is just us who find what Rita says funny, she is mostly being serious. Rita’s reflections make the seemingly humdrum events of a day interesting, but I thought every behind-the-scenes tidbit from the Winkler’s would take me back to the book. Instead, I was led down an ever expanding road that made me realize the logistics of the book, in the context of this article, is not the thing. Rita, her family—including her sisters Leora and Rachel—and the community they’ve built are what made the book possible. Rita’s art is about her world, and so I present the story of how Rita’s 33-year-old life blossomed into what it is today. Until she was 14, Rita’s home was in Calgary, Alberta. In Calgary, Helen shared, Rita was “the first kid to be mainstreamed with an intellectual disability; there was resistance to it, but we were lucky we had the PREP program in Calgary, which was specific to Down syndrome.” PREP leads with the mantra “inclusion for life” which is something Rita was able to experience, for a time. Mark reflected that “the mainstream world learned a lot, they learned to be friends with Rita, and how to treat her with respect.” But when Rita was in Grade 6, Helen noticed there was “too much of a divergence” between Rita and her classmates, she saw her daughter was “segregated in an integrated classroom, which is often what happens when they’re with a teacher’s aide, and everybody else is doing something different.”  And though there was a semblance of inclusivity, Helen told me Rita “didn’t have a social life, she didn’t have friends, she didn’t get invited to birthday parties.” That all changed when she moved her daughter to special education. There, Rita was able to make close friends, and because of her experience in both the mainstream and non-mainstream world, she was able to and continues to inhabit both. Sadly, when Rita was 14-years-old her father died, and she and her mother moved to Toronto in 2003. Helen’s strength to fight for Rita to be accepted continued once they arrived in the city. Rita attended Drewry Secondary School, a school specifically for special education,  and continues to go to DANI, an organization in Toronto creating “opportunities for adults with physical and/or cognitive challenges so that they can participate fully as valued members of the community.” It is because of DANI’s programming that Rita discovered her passion for the arts.  With DANI, Rita not only writes some of their newsletters, but has been part of their stage productions, including: The Wizard of Oz (she played the witch), Peter Pan, Shrek, The Lion King, and Aladdin. But it is painting she loves the most. Her day program at DANI includes art, but when everything started moving to Zoom, Helen started “seeing how they [the instructors] were doing it so I was able to facilitate more art at home. I didn’t know how to facilitate art with Rita. I always noticed the pictures that they did at DANI were so fantastic, but I never understood how they did them.” Helen confessed she, “didn’t really know anything much about art.” But the skills she acquired over the years in folk dance, and adapting dances for individuals with special needs since 2006 at Prosserman JCC, gave her the ability to see it was similar to dance, she simply had to adapt art to make sure it worked for Rita. A poignant reminder that accessibility begins not by thinking about how someone has to adapt but how facilities and programs can adapt to an individual’s requirements. Many of the images in Rita’s book came from her lessons at DANI. A notable one Mark alludes to is a picture Rita made of a woman with a purple dangling arm. He tells me, she created it on her own. Though, Helen is quick to point out that this assignment had been to paint themselves as the Mona Lisa. It may not look like the Mona Lisa, but it shows, as Mark said, Rita’s “vivid imagination,” one “we should learn to embrace.” One that moves us past the confines of the literal. Since the pandemic, Rita also started watercolour classes at L’Arche London in London, Ontario. Rita only started using watercolour this past fall. Helen observed that “watercolours have their own magic when you put them together and they do all kinds of interesting things. . . a person without a disability who is a professional watercolourist intentionally creates certain effects, but with Rita, it’s just like, drop the paint, and something happens, it’s a different approach to the art.” And by approaching art differently, Rita’s work, if we’re willing, can introduce us to new perspectives. Rita’s book is for ages six to nine, because it is a “beautiful way to show that not everybody sees the same way, and that we should learn to accept and learn how others see life,” Mark told me. Adults can learn from that as well. A point Mark emphasizes by sharing the time Rita joined him at Common Ground’s annual general board meeting. Rita is considered a partner at Common Ground, and she along with the other partners who have disabilities and each work at a Coffee Shed and in the kitchen, attended. Board members, staff, and other members of the organization were also present. When the executive director asked if anyone wanted to speak, Rita raised her hand. This was the first time Mark had been in a meeting with Rita, and he did not know what she was going to say, and became, “very nervous.” It took Rita about two to five minutes to announce the bake sale Common Ground was holding for Christmas the following week,  and the executive director thanked Rita for sharing an important piece of news to the room. His response taught Mark a “really important lesson, everybody has a right to have a voice, no matter where they are, and no matter how long it takes somebody to get their message across.” Rita’s messages are overwhelmingly celebratory. Her painting Ketchup and Tuna is inspired by her love for, well, ketchup and tuna (Helen hopes to continue the series, as Rita loves ketchup on many foods). Her card collection, which she gifts on birthdays and anniversaries, are homemade and have unique cakes on them, complete with a flavour profile. Some of her creations include: a green owl cake, a bubble gum cake, a rainbow cake, a wine cake, and a green orange blue cake. Additionally, if you send Rita a picture of your dog or cat, she’ll create a picture of them. Rita showed me a portrait of Nala, a service dog belonging to DANI staff member, Tammy Greenwald (who gives Rita tuna and ketchup for her lunches). But, Helen added, “drawing is not fun for Rita.” What they do to get the outline of the animal is take a photograph and create a template. Rita will then place the paint wherever she wants, and might go back to add in a few brushstrokes to add different patterns.   Should Rita, Helen warned, ever sell her art, do not expect to see what she calls “tough mermaids”.  Rita enjoys making art as independently as possible. And when Helen recently gave her a stencil of a mermaid that had “a lot of squirrely bits of hair” and wasn’t coming together properly, she printed a less detailed stencil. Rita, later remarked “I don’t do tough mermaids.” If she ever sells her art, Helen joked, that will be number one in the contract: No Tough Mermaids. Along with her painting schedule and practice changing in response to the pandemic, so has Rita’s job. Common Ground, Helen informed me, is “strictly a business, it’s not a day program. So the job coaches have had to reinvent themselves.” Some teach Zumba or baking lessons over Zoom. However, what has maintained itself as a constant presence in both of their lives is Jewish folk dance. When Rita’s father was in hospice in Calgary the folk community banded together to raise the Winkler’s spirits. And now, because of lockdown, Rita and Helen’s folk dances are on YouTube. They’ve uploaded them to give their regular participants a chance to see them on their own time. The mother-daughter duo also perform a chair dance every Sunday for Jacob’s Ladder’s hosted event, Jake’s Jam. Jacob’s Ladder, The Canadian Foundation for Control of Neurodegenerative Disease, was founded in 1998 by Ellen and Jeff Schwartz a year after they found out their four-month old son Jacob was diagnosed with Canavan disease. To honour their son’s love of music, the Schwartz’s created Jake’s Jam. Unfortunately, Jake passed away in 2019, but a group of between 60 to 70 people meet each Sunday, after one of the participants proclaimed she wanted to keep singing. Helen and Rita’s dances inspire other participants as well. They have a huge fan in a boy who has cerebral palsy in all four limbs and who is in a wheelchair; the boy’s mother remarked to Helen, he gets so excited that he must rest for a few moments before he can sing.   The more I learned about Rita, her family, and her community the more I was struck by the unwavering support they have for one another. Everyone gives, never expecting to receive, but when they do, each voice is given a platform so they can be heard and listened to. Just as Helen helped Rita hold up the image of the socks, she has helped her daughter find her voice as an artist. It is her “strength” as Mark puts it, that gave her the power to “fight for Rita to be accepted. . . Rita’s found happiness in her life and benefits from the environment she was [/is] in, which is part of what Helen’s created. . .  A lot of energy, a lot of emotion, a lot of work—she’s given up a lot just to make sure that Rita has the quality of life she deserves. From the outside, it’s just amazing.” But what Rita has been able to do is equally amazing. She has inspired people to see and understand the world as she does, in everyday life and consequently in her book My Art, My World. We all perceive the world differently, but Rita’s approach teaches us to positively revel in our different perspectives, and to learn and celebrate one another’s.  To know Rita Winkler’s world and art is to know unbridled joy. Her paintings are imbued with an optimism reflecting the love she has for the medium, and for her subjects. Just as her generous brushstrokes spread paint over surfaces and into forms, her pieces are sure to spread a smile across your face. At least, that’s what happens to me.