Gundega Cenne

Cenne made filmstrip illustrations for the Montreal Protestant School Board when she was still a teenager.^[2][5] She illustrated a 1954 French-language textbook, Jouons Book 1.^[6] She taught art, and was a member of the Independent Artists' Association of Montreal. She exhibited her paintings in shows in Montreal, Paris, New York,^[7] and Toronto as a young woman.^[4]

She was a full-time independent artist after she was seriously injured in a car accident in 1963. "I keep my wheelchair condition concealed whenever I am not present, or the public has only seen my photograph," she wrote in 1966, "for I wish to keep my work and my physical condition as two separate entities. I am a painter in my own right, and my physical condition has nothing to do with it."^[3] She held a retrospective exhibit in 1969, in Owen Sound, where she lived.^[8] In 1975 she was part of a show of six Latvian-Canadian artists at the National Library of Canada.^[9] In 1986, her work was exhibited at the Latvian Lutheran Church in Brookline, Massachusetts.^[10]

Cenne married orthodontist Ivars Cenne; they had two children, Peter and Lauma.^[11] Her daughter, Lauma Kristina Cenne, became a textile artist.^[12] Her mother and her husband both died in 2001;^[13][14] she died in 2009, aged 76 years, in Ottawa.^[15][16]