A local couple has taken their love for art and nature and turned it into something more than a hobby.

Pamela Gerbrandt and her husband Darren first opened their little online printmaking shop Nice Art People earlier this month via social media.

“I’ve always wanted to do something creative and just never knew what that was going to look like,” shared Gerbrandt.

Little did she know that a 100-year-old oak tree would be the inspiration for her latest artistic niche.

The tree stood in the corner of Gerbrandt’s neighbor’s yard, a little piece of nature in the midst of their urban neighborhood. An address mix-up with a tree removal company a few years ago, however, resulted in the premature end of the Oak.

“One day we came outside, as did our neighbor, and it was pretty much chopped to the ground already,” said Gerbrandt. “We were just confused and distraught.”

The Oak’s wood was cleaned up and kept by their neighbors, the artist explained, until it was finally gifted to the Gerbrandt's following their neighbors’ decision to move to British Columbia.

“It felt kind of special just because we knew the story of that tree.”

It was soon after that her Darren first tried wood-cut printing using the wood from that Oak tree.

According to Gerbrandt, it was the perfect combination of two passions in one medium. “We just fell in love with how this raw type of nature was so beautiful on paper.”

Gerbrandt soon teamed up with her husband, and after learning some techniques and gifting a few prints, decided to make their Winnipeg-flavoured artwork available to a wider audience.

Nice Art People, as titled by a friend, has been a way for the couple to combine their passions for art and nature.

“We don’t want to take ourselves too seriously,” Gerbrandt chuckled. “We are nice, we also make nice art.”

The couple collaborates on every print that they produce, even adding coordinates of where the trees used in their prints once stood, when possible.

Gerbrandt, a self-described lover of trees, says that she likes to add those pieces for history. “It’s that extra little detail that makes you feel like there’s a story, that the tree has a past, which of course it does.”

The uniqueness of their projects, too, is something that draws Gerbrandt and her husband in for each print that they make.

“No matter where you’re cutting on a tree, if you do two prints from two different sections of the same tree,” explains Gerbrandt, “those are all also going to be completely different.”

Though prints are their primary focus at this time, Gerbrandt says she welcomes the potential for Nice Art People to branch out into other artistic areas.

“I love to dabble in pretty much any art form,” she laughed. Provided art and nature remain central in their endeavours, there are no limitations on what the future could hold for the artsy entrepreneurs.

“Nature has pretty much always been either my inspiration or my subject matter for the art that I do. I have always loved to be in nature, and trees probably rank pretty high on my favourite-parts-of-nature list.”

Wrapped up in it all is the Gerbrandt’s faith, which the artist says pulls everything together for her.

“It was just a very natural thing for us to do.”