“My passion for working with stone started when I asked a friend of mine where he worked. He said he worked for a company that sold rocks! I laughed and thought he was kidding. A month later I was working at that same company!

That was over 15 years ago and I have been playing and creating with rocks/stones ever since.

Nature truly is my canvas, and I thank it every day.

“After graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design, I worked as a graphic designer in Toronto for many years. Since moving to Prince Edward County, I started to use clay as my artistic medium. My work is very much influenced by the peaceful, rural surroundings of the county and the many animals that I come to know and love.

Individually sculpted from slabs of clay, my animal sculptures are hand stained, glazed and fired in an electric kiln. The surface is sometimes silky and soft, and sometimes textured and rough. Some of my sculptures are smoke fired. This process creates rich, random and spontaneous markings which added to their earthy quality. As all my sculptures are completely crafted by hand without the use of molds, each one is an original and no two are exactly alike. I also create miniature animal sculptures as ornaments and jewelery.

I participate in many juried shows around southern Ontario every year. My work is in many private collections in Canada, in the United States and in Europe.”

The Animal Art Show is delighted to announce that Larry Spencer’s  Good Times Toys will be on display, next weekend, October 9-11 2010.

As a child in the 1970s, John Giles purchased his own Kodak Ektralite camera with a built-in flash at a yard sale because he was tired of being told he couldn’t use the family pocket instamatic as the flash cubes were too expensive. At that moment, a lifetime love for photography was born. Within a year, he was learning to use his parents’ Pentax SLR and became member of his elementary school’s photography club where he learned the ins-and-outs of the darkroom. His photography hobby was soon forced onto the back burner however, as the time demands and financial responsibilities of adulthood approached.

Early in the 21st century, he contracted a debilitating chronic illness which prevented him from working any longer. He also discovered a further complication of the illness had caused chemical sensitivities which prevented him from returning to his beloved hobby in spite of having time for it for the first time in his adult life.

Fortunately, the dawn of the digital camera age was at hand. In 2004, a dream was finally realized: he purchased an entry-level digital SLR camera and an inexpensive zoom lens, and began capturing images of the world around him once again.

Since then, he’s cycled the shutter over 40,000 times and accumulated a library of tens of thousands of photos of just about anything you can capture on film or digital sensor. He’s always up for experimenting with new subjects and techniques, but his preferred subjects have been birds and animals both wild and domestic, flowers and other flora, and insects.

As a child, John spent many a summer visiting relatives who lived in and around Prince Edward County. When his health issues demanded a move away from cities and suburban areas, the County was a natural choice. In 2005 he escaped the smog and pollution of the endlessly expanding Durham Region, and took up full-time residence on the outskirts of Picton. Since then, he’s enjoyed getting out onto the back roads of the area in all seasons and capturing images of the local wildlife and scenery.

In the second half of 2008, a move to the hamlet of Milford further fueled his interest, thanks to the beautiful surroundings and numerous subjects available, virtually on his doorstep. Most recently, he has found the world of macro photography of insects and plants both fascinating and challenging.

John and his wife Ril, home school their two children in Milford. With his wife by his side as a photographer’s assistant, he is actively shooting again and is delighted to be able to show some of his 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.

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.