Getting Real

Erin Rothstein has been honing her skills in photorealistic painting since she was a child. It’s in her blood: her mother, uncle and grandfather were practitioners of the intricate style.

The Toronto-based artist trained at Dawson College in Quebec, then at Concordia University in Montreal.

Rothstein originally began painting food to break out of a creative slump, and it was exactly what she needed. Food is now the inspiration for most of her work.

“I’ve been a foodie forever,” she says. “Mealtime for me is sacred.”

Her creations typically begin with a trip to the grocery store. Then she’ll take close-up photos of whatever she’s painting and begin creating a likeness on canvas, leaving a bit of room for whimsy and improvisation. Usually it’ll take around 40 hours for a complete painting to come together.

The resulting still lifes imbue a sense of magic and vibrancy into everyday food items that we easily view as mundane, but aren’t.