Reconnecting through his art
- Tracey Weiss
- Aug 1
- 3 min read
by Tracey Weiss
Editor
Photos by Tracey Weiss
Andres Montiel’s show at WHAL this month showcases the need to return to what matters most—nature and family
Andres Montiel hopes his paintings, on exhibit in the Clubhouse Gallery at the West Hartford Art League this month, brings us back to our core. The show is called “Third Nature,” and the reason why is clear.
“Our lives are so rushed,” he said. “Phones are distracting and keeping us from what is outside. We need to go back and look at a tree. We’re losing track of our spirituality. Let’s rekindle that connection. We’re losing our souls.”
Montiel has been doing a show at the Art League every three years since his first there, in 2001, when he moved to the U.S. from his native Argentina. It’s something he is forever grateful for. He met (then Executive Director Roxanne Stachelek) and they connected.
“I’m thankful to her that she welcomed me,” he said. “This is such a generous community.”
Montiel’s paintings of landscapes and portraits are focused on nature and his family. He calls his style “romantic with a sprinkle of expressionism. I put my heart in it.”
One painting, “In My Mother’s Arms,” is of his mother, who is holding Montiel as a baby, and his sister by her side.
Another painting, Family Tree, depicts his many relatives—aunts, uncles, siblings, mother—and won the Juror's Choice Award at the 2025 Nor’easter Exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art.
He has exhibited everywhere in group and solo shows from his native Buenos Aires and Carmel, CA to Simsbury and Hartford. He was a grant recipient of the Free Center in Hartford; won an award from the Granby Land Trust’s annual Farm & Orchards Art Show; and won many awards in his native Argentina.
Montiel has been painting since high school. “I didn’t know it could be a career,” he said. That is, until he was 18 and met an artist who was selling his own work.
“He was a friend,” he said. “He showed me his studio. I said, ‘wait, you paint and sell your art?’ He taught me. He got me a set of oils, and I loved it.”
Montiel began his studies at Escuela National de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredon, in Buenos Aires.
“I loved it. I learned so much,” he said. “It was so wild. I would run free. At night, I worked during the day and would go to art classes at night. It was exhausting but I was young. I had a studio in the San Telmo neighborhood. It was bohemian style—we shared a house.”
In 2000, he was invited to the Hartford-area to participate in a show. “I came here for a month. I had a friend who was here and I visited. She lived in the Colt Building (where there was an active art scene at the time).
The following year, he left Argentina for good, after the country suffered from a financial crisis in 2001. “No one had money to buy art,” he said.
When he returned to Greater Hartford, he met his wife, Karen. “I decided to stay,” he said. The couple have two daughters, Azul and Sabrina.
And if, for another reason, his face or name is familiar, it’s because he owned Pachanga, a popular empanada restaurant on Park Road from 2018-2022.
“I still cook, just for friends and family,” he said. “We were doing so well, but I was working 15 hours a day. The kids were young. I knew I had to expand—invest or close. We decided to focus on our children. When I think of it, I can’t believe I did it.” WHL
Go to www.montielartwork.com.
Exhibition “Third Nature”
August 2-30
Opening reception: Sunday August 2, 2-4 pm
Clubhouse Gallery
37 Buena Vista Rd.
West Hartford CT