Werner is a self-taught craftsman, artist, sculptor, designer, stonemason, miner, and father of 6 daughters, who has lived a number lives worth of stories since 1944. In ceremony, he was given the pitch perfect name "Walks Many Colours."

Born in 1944 in the Austrian Alps, Werner grew up apprenticing in hotel management from 1958-1961. At age 17 he joined the crew of his first merchant ship, traveling the world for the next 3 years and collecting stories along the way (ask him about his encounter with a shark off the coast of South Africa, or the hurricane in the English Channel).  He then spent 4 years in Australia working on farms and mining for opals and sapphires, before immigrating to the Cariboo region in Central British Columbia, Canada in 1968. There he learned how to be a trapper, he established several small gold placer mines, he opened up the Wells-Barkerville Trading Post, he began making and selling gold nugget jewelry, he opened and ran a movie theatre, and he co-created the much-loved Vaughan House Restaurant in Quesnel. All these endeavours happened on shoestring budgets made possible by the ingenuity, resourcefulness and charisma gathered in all the twists and turns of his life's winding path.

When Werner relocated to Harrison Hot Springs in 1996, he began work as a contract stonemason, creating many beautiful stone walls assembled out of both whole river rock and more work-intensive chiseled stone. In the process of doing this work he began sculpting in stone, surprised that could tap into the essence of the material and "let the creations out." Werner found the process deeply meditative and rewarding, and since picking up diamond-tipped tools to sculpt in stone for the first time, his artwork has spoken to many people.  

"It's quite exciting when you find a treasure in the bush." Werner works with each treasure to keep as much of the natural form as possible and, in the case of his largest sculpture, let his sense of humour join the process. A collaboration with Chehalis artist Rocky LaRock, "Big Woody" is a 20-ft tall yellow cedar sasquatch that attracted a lot of media attention when the artists chose to "follow a knot in the wood" that turned up right at the bigfoot's groin area, confirming to the world that sasquatches have similar reproductive organs to humans and attracting additional visitors from afar to see the well-endowed sculpture with their own eyes.

For a period of 20 years, Werner Streicek carved fine artworks from the sublime to the surreal, handcrafted furniture, monuments, magical creatures, commissioned works, and magnificent statues. The piece that is now the nearest and dearest to his heart is "Mother Earth and her Children," a 4-tonne statue and fountain hewn from a 6-tonne block of black granite that Werner quarried himself. The piece took Werner almost 1 year to complete and stand at 9 feet 4 inches tall. 

Through all his stories, Werner considers his greatest accomplishment in life as having 6 daughters, 8 grandchildren, and great grand-children. It was thanks to one of those daughters that Werner was invited in 2004 to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale, who found Werner's artwork through a website she had created for a school web design project. A proud luddite when it comes to all things computer and internet, Werner's artwork has been primarily sold through chance encounters and in-person meetings. ​For example, his stunning black granite Crystal Dragon sold to philanthropist and billionaire Bret Wilson (of Canada's reality TV program "Dragon Den") through a chance conversation at a spa owned by Werner's daughter Josephine. 

Now for the first time in several decades, Werner's art is being displayed on the world wide web, where it can find a wider audience than those who are lucky enough to happen upon it in the small lakeside town of Harrison Hot Springs BC where Werner and many of his artworks live, with his loving partner Rayanna.  

Each of Werner's pieces is imbued with the spritely energy of this living legend, who can often be found sitting on his porch and marveling at the brilliant design skills of spiders, feeding the birds, listening to the rain and dreaming up his next visionary project.

One remarkable thing about this multi-faceted man is that he has been an amputee through much of it. In the late 1970s, Werner had an unfortunate encounter with a logging truck on a back road. Those around him during his recovery recall that, aside from the time spent healing from the tragedy, the loss of his left foot didn't seem to slow Werner down. To ease the discomfort of those around him, and perhaps dispell his own, the ever-charming Werner developed jokes, told in his thick Austrian accent, about how he was now immune to attacking dogs who, after chomping on his prosthesis, would "think twice before trying to bite [him] again." This injury has developed in his golden age into back complications that cause him chronic pain, but Werner prefers to focus on the blessing of being alive.