Paul was born in New York City in 1950, son of a dynamic advertising executive, and part of a large Spanish-Irish clan headed by his resourceful and artistic mother. After a brief stint studying advertising at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Paul emigrated to Canada in the mid-1970s to marry a Canadian singer-songwriter, Ali Jennings. In Toronto, he quickly established The Water Man, delivering cases of Perrier and Evian to homes and offices long before bottled water became commonplace in corner stores.

Paul opened Emilio’s restaurant (named for his Peruvian grandfather) in 1980 with his mother-in-law, Joyce Jennings. Its unusual and creative atmosphere helped to make it one of the most successful restaurants in Toronto during the 1980s. An avid collector of art, Paul had Emilio’s walls covered in paintings by such local artists and friends as Anita Kuntz, Konrad Bonk and Bridgette Allen.

After 10 busy years, Emilio’s closed its doors and Paul moved north of Toronto to the Hockley Valley area to reinvent the traditional bed and breakfast with his own sense of style. His plans were cut short by a serious car accident in which he suffered a severe head injury and Paul spent the next three years in various rehabilitative centres. Early on in his hospital stay, Paul’s wife brought him paints and he took to it immediately.

As with everything he did, Paul painted with a passion and boundless energy that made for a prolific artistic output. Paul’s paintings became another way to deal with the speech and short-term memory disabilities caused by his injury. Where Paul’s brain often replayed the same thoughts and images, his paintings are physical reminders of his journey to recovery. In the years since his accident, Paul painted every day and sometimes through the night in his red studio on the farm that he shared with his wife and family, dogs, cats and chickens. Paul passed away in 2017 and left behind over 200 paintings and hundreds of letters, written to family, friends, and those he admired.

Original text by Nicholas Jennings in 2003, updated in 2019 for this archive.