The artist next door: Meet Jesus Estevez By Ardith Racey
Fine Arts
Jesus
Estevez’s quiet
passion and mild manner belie his greatness as an artist. He calls himself a “realistic painter” who likes to paint what he’s ‘close to’: “I live in the city of Belleville, so I paint my surroundings. I like to paint what I see every day.” His work reflects his love of the area: Belleville and Quinte area streets, homes and the harbour are central motifs, as are images of people and animals in authentic settings filled with backgrounds of snow, sun, or rain. It’s the connections with local cityscapes and landscapes that people can understand – that’s what makes people “move,” says Estevez. Although design is an important aspect of painting, the rules are not the same as those of photography, claims Estevez. He likes to “put things in and put things out,” but his chief concern is the way light changes what we see. He explains it this way: “In music you have tones . . . in painting we have values which are the same thing – if the darks and shadows are harmonious, your brain will get happy. This is how you find beautiful colours that don’t come out of a tube. You have to mix them. I don’t think about colour; I only think about values.”
Sunrise on the Farm
Estevez values painting as a “lan- They’ve worked together as an entrepreguage that we all understand.” He neurial team for more than 30 years, presays that while a photograph can cap- viously in Spain and now in Canada, sellture life in a second, painting requires ing and designing silver jewelry and art. hours and hours of “imprinting the vi- “My wife loves and understands stones,” By Peter Paylor sual effects.” He works hard to comsays Estevez, “and she’s supportive of municate what he sees as beautiful in my art.... If she doesn’t like something, his surroundings. This is reflected in she tells me.” Sounds like the perfect forhow people react to Estevez’s work; mula for a husband-and-wife team. often they comment that although they have lived in the area their entire lives, Then again, there’s not much to dislike they have never noticed the beauty of about Estevez’s work. It’s brilliant and places the way Estevez’s paintings al- vibrant and most of all, authentic. low them to enter or remember a landscape or a structure. therocks.ca
“I paint eight hours, almost every day,” says Estevez nonchalantly, “but my goal is not to be famous, but to be a master.” It often takes two or three weeks to finish a painting, and he paints on small canvases because of time, and because on a practical level local people are more apt to buy them. He says that one of his long-standing jokes is that “the painting is not finished until it’s sold because if it’s around, he will keep changing it.” Estevez and his wife, Erin, own and operate their store Thomas Estevez Design, located at 395 Front Street, Belleville, and they have a strong online presence, but given COVID-19, he says sales and commissions have been down. 18
