Wainio’s paintings delineate the contours of an experience of life, time and things that is negotiated, on the one hand, through levels of the imagination (the tale), of memory (the historical chronicle) and of the conditions of contemporary life, and on the other hand, through several degrees of authenticity (the world of the tale, the technological gap) and of distancing (vanished traditions and the simultaneously real and inaccessible worlds of the fable and ancient illustrations).”

- Michele Thériault (Les Registres du contemporain/Contemporary Registers, 2000)