We are thrilled to have Ril Giles premiere her work at the Animal Art Show!

Ril Giles is a photographer and digital painter. She creates digital paintings of her photographs which are then transferred to canvas. This relatively new art form is known as Paintography.

Ladybug

Ril’s background is in acrylic folk painting  and she studied under her Aunt Vinetta, an accomplished folk artist from Cape Breton.

With an interest in photography, and no time or space to paint with small children underfoot, Ril picked up her first SLR camera in 2007 when her photographer husband <link to john’s profile perhaps> gave her his broken digital Rebel. Being restricted to shooting in manual mode only with no auto focus, Ril had to learn to set up her photos “old school” rather than just point and shoot. Under her husband’s tutelage, Ril was able to accomplish the effects she wanted for her pictures and, in fact, remains committed to that style of photography today. So much so, that she still uses the old broken Rebel for all her works.

With today’s technology, processing her photos in her ‘digital darkroom’ and applying digital painting techniques to them became the most anticipated part of photography for Ril. She soon found herself going back to her folk painting roots and began applying those techniques to her photos digitally, falling in love with the results. With no space needed, and no physical cleanup of paints and brushes, digital painting became the perfect art form for the busy but creative stay at home mom.

The Animal Art Show is Ril’s first public show, and she is excited to debut her work there. Although the subjects of her paintographs are varied, she has a particular love for paintographing ladybugs.

Ril was raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and met her husband in Whitby. For the past 5 years they have called Prince Edward County home, and reside in beautiful village of Milford where they home school their 2 children.

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