Ajax Artist Trina Astor-Stewart Fashions a Creative Life

Trina Astor Stewart at her computer control centre with a fine art photograph on the monitor and an abstract painting in the background.

[My December 2009 profile in the News Advertiser]

Trina Astor-Stewart is a creative power house. The Ajax artist is not only an accomplished commercial and fine art photographer and a painter, but she writes poetry, has published a children’s book and created and maintains an online arts/activities magazine.

And who can claim a professional career that goes back to the age of 12?! That was how old she was when she began working in her father’s photography studio in Bowmanville, first as a stylist and camera assistant for portrait and wedding shoots, then graduating in her teens to shooting formal portraits and weddings on her own. After her dad retired and closed down the studio in the late 1970s, she worked for short stints in two different camera stores in Oshawa, then landed a job as a photo and negative retoucher for the famed Toronto portrait photographer, Cavouk. And in the meantime, she established her own studio and began shooting weddings on a sub-contract basis for other photographers.

Her well-honed skill at photography retouching (hand-done, back in the days before photoshop) naturally led her to hand-tinting black and white photographs and then to fine art painting. As a painter she began collaborating with an interior designer to make abstract and realistic paintings to fit interiors of private homes. And then followed a natural progression to making personal paintings that she showed in group and solo shows in the Oshawa area.

With the advent of the internet, Astor-Stewart and her husband, Breck, became early adopters and started a business designing web sites, one of which is her own creation, Astoria Magazine, that showcases creative people, local events, tourism and gardening. And, after she and her husband had lived with gluten intolerance for many years, Trina recently turned the health impediment into a creative and financial positive by developing and marketing gluten-free flour mixes and providing special recipes to other sufferers of the condition.

The future for this multi-tasking dynamo? Certainly she’ll continue her commercial photography and other business ventures, but painting and fine art photography will increasingly play a more important role, as she continues living a whole life in the creative spirit. You can connect with Astor-Stewart through her magazine at www.astoriamagazine.com