Ila Lovelace-Kuhnert – Rising above and growing into her passion

BY JANIECE CAMPBELL

Allow me to introduce you to this edition’s Women Empowered, who is none other than the supremely talented 18-year-old Trinidadian artist, Ila Lovelace-Kuhnert.

Since birth, all Ila has known was creative arts. Born into an extremely art-inclined family, it seems as if becoming a painter was her destiny. Not only is her mother currently a filmmaker, but she also has artistic connections through various family members who are also artists as well as writers and videographers. With such a creative family, one may feel immense pressure to live up to their accomplishments, though Ila says that she never once felt forced to commit to becoming an artist.

“From a young age, I was always going to exhibitions and meeting so many different people. I’ve met a ton of artists in my life and it wasn’t necessarily pushed on to me to pursue arts, but I was definitely encouraged to be creative throughout my whole life. I wasn’t really good at math for example, but I was always painting and drawing. It turned out to be something that I loved.”

In fact, Ila’s discovery of her own talents led her to making jewelry and having her own jewelry line at the age of 10, which she then sold to a major store in Trinidad. Beginning to realize her potential, at age 14, Ila decided to take art a bit more seriously in high school and within the following year, she found the perfect art style and focal point that was best suited for her. In her current body of work, she typically focuses on representing women.

“Mainly, the inspiration for my paintings come from the women I grew up with and am surrounded by. The women in my family, my mother’s friends, and just every woman I meet is so beautiful and they all inspire me to paint only women all the time.”

Today, Ila’s paintings are being featured at the Peel Art Gallery Museum + Archives (PAMA) located in Brampton. The Caribbean art exhibit is titled, “when night stirred at sea,” and showcases the work of ten contemporary artists working in Jamaica, Trinidad, Canada, America and the United Kingdom. In the breathtaking exhibit, Ila displays four eye-catching portraits of various women illustrated in a unique fashion.

What separates Ila’s interesting art style apart from others, aside from her fascination of the female image, is her method of intentionally not blending the colours. Instead, she uses hard-edged shapes that result in a one-of-a-kind stylized image, emphasizing the true beauty and strength of each subject. A mixture of brilliant acrylic paints and mixed media on canvas gives each portrait its own texturized flare, ultimately accentuating the purposeful contours on each woman’s face. The four vibrant prints on display are even inspired by colours, entitled Rose, Azul, Blue and Morena.

“So far, I have only drawn women. I’ve started working on bodies as well. I paint them graphically, breaking up the shadows and the highlights into shapes. I don’t tend to do much blending in my work. I’m not sure why I prefer this style. I think it has to do with the fact that I’m a perfectionist and everything needs to be neat and organized, and that’s exactly how I view my work,” Ila says. “I try to use a lot of colours. I’ll paint the faces in the same type of way, but the backgrounds are bold with bright colours and I don’t see too many people using shapes in this way. They might do it in a different type of way, but predominantly I only use shapes and I haven’t seen many people do that. It’s a cool way.”

Though her method is absolutely impressive, Ila fears that she’s become too accustomed to this specific style of art. She aims to step out of her comfort zone and try new things, as she’s in the process of building her portfolio for college applications. Though she has an immense passion for painting, she has chosen to keep it as a sort of side hustle and instead, pursue sustainable architecture as her true profession. As the COVID-19 pandemic is a bit of a hinderance to her learning, Ila’s using her time at home to further develop her skills and better herself.

“I have a problem with not being able to experiment. Since I’ve found this style, I’ve been so comfortable doing it that I find it difficult to practice other styles. I also need to work on my sketching. As good as I am at painting, I’m not the best sketcher, but I’ve definitely gotten a lot better in the past few months because I’ve been doing it every day.

I’m thankful that [COVID-19] has not affected me too much negatively. In fact, I’ve had a lot more time to paint and experiment with sculpting. I’ve had a lot of time to work on my art. The only thing it seems to have affected is college. I’ve decided to take a gap year instead of going to college right after graduation, because I’d rather have the proper college experience.”

A young lady with much potential and promise, Ila vows to keep herself busy for the future by working with textiles and other artistic elements to take her work to the next level. As advice to youth alike her with a love for visual arts but are unsure if the industry is for them, Ila shares:

“I would just say to always keep experimenting, even though I don’t,” she playfully laughs. “But seriously. Push yourself, because you never know until you give it a try. You may sit there questioning yourself, not knowing if you can do it. But regardless, you have to try and what’s meant to be, will be.”

Ila doesn’t have a personal art page at this time, but she plans to look into creating one once she begins to release more art pieces. Until then, you can view Ila’s work along with the nine other Caribbean artists on display at PAMA via a 360-degree virtual tour at https://peelregion.ca/pama/caribbean-art/.