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Chinese Folk Art from Jinshan Township

1/24/2018

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These Chinese Folk Art Paintings were purchased by Kate from the Chinese communities in which they were created. These "Peasant Paintings", as they were known, were created by the working class in the Jinshan Township beginning in the late 1970s. The Jinshan Township region became known as the most outstanding among the country's fifty painting townships.

There is a large-format art book focusing on these paintings on display at Westland Gallery during the "Legacy" exhibition. Below are excepts from the book's forward.


"When Jinshan's peasants exhibited their paintings for the first time in the China Art Gallery in Beijing, they were praised in the capital's art circles," writes Cao Zhengfeng. "Their peculiar style showed the rural flavor of Shuixiang County and expressed the painters' love for life. They not only appealed to the aesthetic sense but also revealed the truth of life. The successful exhibition opened up a new type of art, the art of the labouring people, which, for hundreds and thousands of years, had not been acknowledged as a national art. When peasant painting overcame historical prejudice and revealed its charm, people started to look at it with new eyes."
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"Another extraordinary phenomenon resulting from peasant painting is that rural women, who have never painted before, paint according to their own free will. Since folk art is different from western painting techniques, instructors in the cultural center taught them to apply their own techniques in designing and colour mixing, which they had learned from embroidery, printing and paper cutting, to painting. When the obstacles between folk art and painting are removed, the peasants' talent and ingenuity for artistic creation are given full play."

Stop by Westland Gallery to see these important works in person and read the book's forward in its entirety.

"Legacy" is on display from January 30th - February 10th 2018. ​​
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Paul Abeleira and Denise Antaya at Westland Gallery

1/11/2018

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Denise and Paul are both talented realistic painters, but their chosen subject matter, techniques and palettes set them apart. Denise uses fine, detailed brushwork on small canvases to create intimate landscape paintings. Paul’s kitchen-inspired still lifes are rendered with looser brushstrokes while deep colours maintain a traditional feel.
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Both artists value continued learning to expand their skills. In fact, teaching was the foundation of their friendship when Denise took a couple workshops from Paul at the onset of her artistic career. Paul obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Ontario in 2004. Following a degree in Advertising Art from Fanshawe College and a long career in advertising, Denise began her career as a professional painter by attending the Academy of Realist Art in Toronto. Both continue to participate in workshops to further develop their techniques and Paul teaches painting workshops at The Arts Project.
In addition to painting professionally for 17 years, Paul Abeleira is a trained chef, having completed the chef training program at Fanshawe College. Paul has moved away from the bustling kitchens of the culinary world to devote more time to painting and maintaining his food and art blog. On “I Cook and Paint”, Paul brings together his love of cooking and of painting. He includes footage of his paintings being created in some of his Youtube cooking videos, and paints still lifes that are inspired by his recipes such as “Pasta Roller” from Paul’s homemade pasta dough recipe.
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Denise’s landscape paintings are motivated by the desire to reveal nature’s magic to her audience. Plein air painting plays a significant role in Denise’s artistic practice. Working on location, allows Denise to capture the subtilties of light, weather and time of day. Denise seeks to convey, in her words, “the warmth of the sunshine, the coolness of the shadows, the dancing of the light across the fields… and the heaviness of the air with the impending storm.”
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The exhibition will run from January 16th through January 27th. A reception will be held on Saturday January 20th from 1 – 4pm and Artist Talk on Wednesday January 24th at 7pm.
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