For sis­ters Tonya and Sonel Row­ley, paint­ing has al­ways been a favourite hob­by. Art has pro­vid­ed need­ed re­lax­ation from their very busy sched­ules–Tonya, 26, is a lawyer while Sonel, 24, is study­ing a PhD in ed­u­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty.

The painters have amassed a body of work which, ac­cord­ing to Tonya, they "just want to share."

The paint­ings will be shared at a joint ex­hib­it at the Art So­ci­ety of T&T from April 12-20. The ex­hib­it will in­clude 34 pieces of acrylic on can­vas de­pict­ing T&T land­scape and cul­ture.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day, Tonya said there would al­so be pieces in oil and a few ab­stracts–some­thing new the sis­ters are ex­per­i­ment­ing with.

This is the sec­ond joint ex­hib­it for the Row­leys. The first ex­hib­it was in 2008 at Hori­zons Art Gallery.

Among the paint­ings in the ex­hib­it will be de­pic­tions of Hosay in St James and scenes from To­ba­go. Tonya said the lo­cal land­scape was a con­tin­u­ing source of in­spi­ra­tion.

"I think our lo­cal land­scape and the cul­ture it­self has a cer­tain vi­bran­cy that al­ready lends it­self to the colours," she said.

"Colours are the hall­mark of my work. It's the thing that de­fines my work the most and some­thing peo­ple of­ten re­mark on."

Tonya added that she some­times paints us­ing pho­tographs which adds a unique point-of-view to the paint­ings and al­lows her to re-in­ter­pret the scenery.

Al­though Sonel's art­work deals with the same sub­ject mat­ter as Tonya's, her work is more "tex­tured." Tonya said there was a con­trast be­tween the two bod­ies of work as they used dif­fer­ent tech­niques.

Tonya and Sonel have been paint­ing since high-school. Both have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Women in Art Bi­en­ni­al com­pe­ti­tion, win­ning awards for best land­scape/seascape, graph­ics, still lifes and por­traits. The sis­ters al­so ex­hib­it­ed in the 2012 Women in Art an­nu­al show.

Both sis­ters have had art­work in­clud­ed in pri­vate and cor­po­rate col­lec­tions lo­cal­ly and some of their pieces have been added to the Oval Art project.

The ex­hib­it takes place at the Art So­ci­ety of T&T, cor­ner of St Vin­cent Av­enue and Ja­maica Blvd, Fed­er­a­tion Park, St Clair.

Gallery hours are from 10 am to 6 am dur­ing the week and from 10 am to 2 pm on week­ends.

For more in­for­ma­tion email: art­fulex­pres­sions2013@ya­hoo.com. Sam­ples of Tonya's work can al­so be viewed on her Web site: www.ton­yarow­ley.com.

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