Paul Abeleira and Denise Antaya at Westland Gallery

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.

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.

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.”

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.