"The idea of a half-submerged dining table had been with me for several years before I finally had the opportunity to bring it to life. The table was set up and photographed in June 2025 at Nimmo Bay. Every element in these paintings tells a handcrafted story, from seafood harvested that morning in the surrounding waters and prepared by the culinary team to the carefully chosen platters and serving vessels."
The Maker
Mitchell Villa's paintings sit at the intersection of the historical and the contemporary, drawing on Rococo and Baroque traditions to inform figurative work that feels both familiar and surreal. Deeply personal and intuitively made, is large scale paintings evoke, memory more than narrative - watery, vivid and dreamlike, blurring the line between the real and the remembered. Villa is a self-taught artist based on Vancouver Island, BC
The Material
Mitchell paints with oil on canvas and also creates all of the ceramic pieces that you see in his paintings. Each piece begins months in advance with a single idea, developed through sketches and elaborate photoshoots with live models and props before reaching the canvas.