Rebecca Aldernet

Rebecca Aldernet paints from a studio in Saint John, New Brunswick. The figurative work — women crowned with donuts, cake, candy, the small theatre of an unlikely headpiece — leans on the long tradition of formal portraiture, then punctures it with sugar.

The landscapes work the other way around. Coast and pasture and lighthouse painted quietly, attentively — what she calls the poetry of daily life in Atlantic Canada. Same hand, different volume.

Her studio runs on an atelier model, with more than sixty artists working under her direction, and the practice carries a single conviction: art should be alive, accessible, and shared.