"High Tide" Fine Art Print
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Contents
The print is 18 x 36 inches (22 x 40 with border)
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Print Details
This is a giclée print on archival paper which guarantees a lifetime without fading or colour loss. The original work is oil on canvas and available for sale from the artist.
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Notes from the Artist
The idea of a half-submerged dining table had been with me for several years before I finally had the opportunity to make it happen. The table was set up and photographed in June 2025 onsite at Nimmo Bay and the paintings were created over the following ten months in my studio on Vancouver Island. Every object in these paintings has its own handcrafted story: the seafood was harvested in the morning from the waters surrounding Nimmo Bay, thoughtfully prepared by the culinary team, and carefully arranged on platters and serving vessels. In October 2024, I started learning pottery with the goal of creating an entire table setting specifically for these paintings. I had no experience working with clay, but eight months later the collection was complete. I still remember pulling the last few pieces from the kiln the day before leaving for Nimmo Bay. Every ceramic object in these paintings was made by me. Each piece was either wheel-thrown or hand-built in Victoria, BC, then hand-painted at my studio in North Cowichan, before travelling back to Victoria for final firing. I spent several months researching ceramic vessels, drawing inspiration from pieces in European museum collections. Many of the forms directly reference ancient Greek, Roman, and African pottery, while the painted decoration is based on some of my favourite images from art history. Depicting objects with such a personal connection feels essential to these paintings. It provides a sense of history and authenticity while honouring the effort put into harvesting and preparing the food. My typical approach to a photoshoot is to take hundreds of photographs and spend time refining each detail. This shoot was the opposite: the changing tide meant there was only a brief window to capture the scene before the water transformed it completely. That spontaneity, a bit of that rising tide chaos, comes through in the finished work.
Mitchell Villa Artist Bio
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. 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. Deeply personal and intuitively made, his 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, British Columbia.
View other works by Mitchell Villa
The half-submerged table was realized with the support of the Nimmo Bay team. Locations were scouted, seafood was harvested, and the meal was thoughtfully prepared. As the tide came in, the chairs began to float, and the tablecloth swayed gently with the current. There is something serene about the overturned chair bobbing in the water.
The painting imagines a meal where the guests have suddenly disappeared. Everything suggests the meal has only just been interrupted: glasses remain full, food sits on the plates, but the diners are all gone. There are subtle hints of a hurried departure, but nothing is explained. The missing narrative is left for the viewer to complete.
Removing people from the painting also changes the relationship between the viewer and the image. Rather than observing the scene from the outside, the viewer becomes a guest arriving after the event, or a witness trying to understand what has happened.
I struggled with the composition of High Tide because the landscape is so spectacular that it was difficult not to let it dominate the painting. After several studies, I decided to crop tightly around the table; keeping it surrounded by water conveys the remoteness of the location while allowing the table to remain the focus.
During the photoshoot there was a moment when the tide began rising rapidly. The water deepened, the chairs started to bob, and it almost felt as though the table itself would drift away with the current. This ephemerality was the exact moment I wanted to capture.
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