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Nina Simone by Zeca Vilela, Acrylic on Canvas
Nina Simone by Zeca Vilela, Acrylic on Canvas

Nina Simone by Zeca Vilela, Acrylic on Canvas

Regular price $3,500.00 Sale

40 x 40 

Original Artwork

My name is Zeca Vilela, I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I grew up with my two brothers and parents. In Sao Paulo I got my bachelor degree in advertisement and an extra training in art.

In Brazil, it is very normal to marry your girlfriend after you have finished your university. You end up living as expected. Love, marriage, babies… When I finished my studies, I realized that my life at the age of 26 would only be as predictable as I would allow it to be. I choose to do something different.

I bought a ticket to Dublin and left with the little money I had to learn English. Dublin is known as a city in which many people from different nationalities live, including Brazilians. Being far away from home is fun and learning a new language proved to be a challenge. But I mastered it in the end. I lived in Dublin for a couple of years, working in restaurants and making drawings on Grafton Street.

Then there came a blonde Dutch woman for a weekend to Dublin with a good friend of her. There was a spark and a lot of weekends back and forth between Eindhoven and Dublin followed. 10 years down the road, we are now married and parents of two children, Fos and Lune. I currently work for DAF and I am a happy family man. Yet there is a passion that has always been a part of my life and that is art. Making drawings and paintings is something I’ve done since childhood and I’ve always enjoyed doing.

I started with acrylics by making a painting of my little nephew, just as a joke. I asked for a beautiful picture and then made a painting of it. The response was really overwhelming. Suddenly all the children had to be painted in the family and my friends stood in line for their own children on canvas. The fun is that every painting is unique. Of course, you as an artist have a technique, style and preference, but each person is unique and has its own background and appearance. Capturing those unique features in a painting is the nicest thing I did besides my children.

Zeca.