Founder/Artist - Catherine Sgro

Founder of Woodbridge Art School, Catherine is an accomplished artist and teacher, who has been teaching fine arts to adults and children for over 14 years. Catherine and her staff have been featured on City TV's Breakfast television, Rogers Television, TLN and local Newspapers. Catherine was also honoured with York Regions 2004 "Woman of the Year" Award for Visual Artist & teacher. Today, she has 22 of her works published and distributed in galleries and stores across Canada and the United States and is recognized as an exemplary artist for her accomplishments. Catherine strives to provide quality art instruction, opportunity and inspiration to all her students.

Catherine's special interest in art started in early childhood. At the young age of 16 she won first place in Chrysler's "Search for Artists" competition in oil painting. With great dedication and hard work she has developed a unique style, a softness and delicacy to her work, with meticulous attention to detail. Catherine paints her world, her surroundings, her children and family as seen through the eyes of a mother.

Several of Catherine's paintings are very special to her, mainly because they involve her own children. One of these paintings was

"Little Mother".

"As soon as my daughter entered the toddler years she was fond of dolls and their pretty dresses, which soon developed into a passion for dress-up and playing pretend. Dressing up was part of her daily ritual and imagining she was a mommy with her baby gave her great joy. The look of delight on her face as she leisurely strolled around the house is just one of many memories a mother has of her daughter's world of make believe."

"Frosty's Sleigh Ride" portrays her two children.

"I remember the enthusiasm on my children's faces when they finally reached home. They were both quite proud of what they had accomplished. Their cheeks were crimson red, and their hands toasty warm from hours of play, as one pushed and one pulled to get Frosty up the hill. Frosty had taken quite a bit of preparation, but it was all worth it. I'm sure my children will never forget Frosty's sleigh ride."

Many of Catherine's pieces, especially her recent ones tell a story. If Catherine is not using her own children as subjects, she employs her nieces, nephews and even her neighbours, and most of the time they are willing participants.

When an idea comes to mind, Catherine then assembles the perfect setting where her subjects, (usually children) will pose for those few moments when time stands still. A multitude of shots are taken, until Catherine finds the image that catches her eye. From there the image is recreated in oil paint, with high realism and detail. You want the person to see your painting and feel as if they were there, or at least want to be there. If I can achieve this, then I have succeeded as an artist, an artist who uses paint to tell a story.

Catherine was born in Toronto and presently resides in Woodbridge, Ontario with her husband, son and daughter.

October 2005

It's a Win, Win and Draw for Local Artist and Her Students

By Pam C. Chiotti

Photographs or paintings? That's the question one might ask admiring the works of local artist extraordinaire, Catherine Sgro. A Woodbridge resident for 12 years, Catherine is a celebrated artist whose oil paintings are so incredibly detailed, they make you want to stroke them with your fingertips.

Running the bustling Woodbridge Art School out of Maple's historic Donald Grant House, Catherine's passion for at shines brightly inside, where she and six other teachers provide step-by-step art instruction all year round.

In the school, which is the studio for about 200 students, an array of Catherine's paintings adorn the walls, and many of her students' works are also prominently displayed. There are also various plaques, including one from Honourable Maurizio Bevilacqua, Member of Parliament for Vaughan, King and Aurora. This particular plaque is in recognition of Catherine's artist and teacher achievement award at the In Celebration of Women awards banquet in 2004. This is merely one of her – and her students' – many prestigious accomplishments.

Using models, such as her daughter, son, niece, nephew and neighbourhood children, Catherine's paintings have a romantic mood about them and depict charming real-life scenes such as boys playing in the snow, a girl praying, playing piano or pushing a stroller and other tranquil and touching scenes. Her paintings are meant to look like real life, and realism is exactly the philosophy her school is based upon.

“We don't do a lot of abstract, so fine details such as shadows and light sources are taught,” says Catherine. “We focus on realism, especially with the high school kids.”

Catherine's students are all ages, and while arts and crafts have no place in this school, there is lots of instruction on different techniques using various art mediums. For instance, in addition to painting classed, there are cartooning classes, figurative illustration and fashion design classes, pen and ink classes and plenty of structure.

“It's more of a fine arts school,” says Catherine. “You'll learn perspective and how to draw a subject by breaking it down into shapes. Everything is step by step,” she says and goes on to explain a few basic, but important, drawing techniques.

“If you're drawing a giraffe, the neck is a long circular sort of tube. The legs are tube. The body is more of an oval. If you can break down a subject into shape and then add details afterward, the kids find it easier to draw.”

Works by the students are sometimes displayed at McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Historic Wallace House in Woodbridge, the Woodbridge Fair and Pierre Berton Resource Library.

Another huge accomplishment occurred last year when 15 drawings by her students appeared on Picture the Promise campaign posters for the Kerry Lynn Foundation, an organization started by a mother whose daughter died at the hands of domestic abuse. All 200 students submitted drawings that answered the question: What does kindness mean to you?

About 5,000 posters were distributed.

In addition, six Woodbridge Art School students had their work featured on a poster for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Only 25 were chosen out of 6,000 entries. Woodbridge Art School also had five winners in Vaughan's Blooming Artist competition, part of the Communities in Bloom event. Three students had their work featured on the cover of a food and wine magazine and the school has been profiled on TV and in the newspaper.

This past spring, Toronto Region Conservation Authority and the Humber River Association decided to promote the natural beauty of the Humber. Woodbridge Art students were among those asked to draw any scene from the Humber River Valley. Forty winners were chosen in total and 35 of those were Catherine's students. Their drawings were displayed at the MeMichael gallery before going to the new Pierre Berton Resource Library in October.

Winning competitions and awards is second nature to Catherine, who at age 16 won the Chrysler search for Canadian wildlife artists.

“There were a lot of entries, and they liked my work,” says Catherine, who in addition to painting scenes with children also paints animals and floral.

When Catherine was eight years old, her mother recognized her talent and trotted her off to an art teacher. Accomplished enough to sit in an adult class, she studied with that teacher for eight years. After completing high school, Catherine went into the graphic arts field where she worked in commercial art. Then, in her early 20's, she was approached to teach art a various community centres including Woodbridge Pool and Memorial Arena, and the Al Palladini and Dufferin Clark Community Centres.

“That's how it started,” she recalls 12 years later. “These adults had children and they wanted me to teach them. It began with a few private lessons, and before I knew it, I had a class of eight kids and it grew from there.” Within five years, she had 50 students. (Some of those students stayed with Catherine for many years, and are currently studying fine arts in university.)

Eventually, she opened up schools on Woodbridge Avenue and on Major Mackenzie Drive, finally combining the two into her current location on Weston Road. As one might expect, there is a picture on the wall showing Vaughan Mayor Michael Di Biase at the 2002 opening of the new art school and gallery.

Classes start everyday at 4 p.m. during the school year and are held on Saturdays and Sundays as well. During the summer, the school runs an art camp and there is a March break program. Adult classes for all levels are also available. Woodbridge Art School and Gallery also works in conjunction with the York Catholic District School Board, where they teach specialty art classes to children in Grades 1 through8. While the art school doubles as a gallery where you can also have pictures framed, Hartland Art & Framing, publishes and sells some of Catherine Sgro's works in Canada and the U.S.

Art Impressions

Spring 2000

Catherine Sgro is in the thick of life and she couldn't be happier. With two small children underfoot, the Woodbridge, Ontario mom knows first hand that finding time to paint takes dedication and hard work. Add teaching fine arts out of her home studio to the mix, and you have one multi-tasking Supermom in the works.

Sgro's special interest in art started as early as age six. She credits her mother for encouraging and supporting her, doing everything from ferrying her back and forth to bi-weekly art lessons to, eventually, organizing and hosting mini-art shows for family and friends.

It was during her teen years that Sgro began painting in oils, taking lessons from local artist Zerviah Mariano. After five years of instruction, she had an excellent grasp of realism and how to achieve it. Although it would take many more years of experience to hone her skills, she had gained enough confidence in her abilities to pursue art as a career.

At age sixteen, Sgro won first place - as well as an honorable mention - in the youth category of Chrysler's Search for Wildlife Artists. It was shortly after, that her mother proudly hosted Sgro's first "art show" in their home.

Attending George Brown College, Sgro ventured into graphic design. Enjoying the change from fine arts, she made a career in graphic design for five years. It was about this time that she and her husband decided to start a family. Wanting the flexibility to stay at home with her infant son, she left the world of graphic design and began teaching part-time art lessons to adults at local community centers. In a way, her life had come full circle: her own first art lessons had taken place at a community center. Now she was the mentor, giving the lessons.

From there, Sgro quickly grew into teaching children with a penchant for art, and opened up her own home studio. It was while teaching and raising two children that she started to paint again. Graduating from wildlife, she never left her love of florals. However, a new subject had emerged, stirred by the love she felt for her own children: the precious moments of childhood.

It is those moments, where time stands still, that Sgro tries to capture in her works today. Her initial models were nieces, nephews and friends. As her own children grew, they too, became instant subjects. Her latest work, Frosty's Sleigh Ride, features her son and daughter pulling a snowman in a sleigh.

While painting has become a way of life for Sgro and her supportive husband, John, it has never been a job. "Painting relaxes me. I never find it boring, tedious or a chore. If at the end of the day, I spent only a few hours on a painting, it was all worth it" she says.

Sgro has taken the leap from originals to open editions and now to limited editons. In the last year alone, she has released six limited editions which are available as canvas giclees.

As life progresses and brings new changes, so too, will Sgro's subjects reflect her inspirations. Already she's feeling an inner desire to paint women and children. What's on tomorrow's canvas though, depends on her world, her surroundings, her children and family, as seen through the eyes of Catherine Sgro, Supermom.

From painting to opera, Vaughan artists in spotlight

The Liberal, September 17, 2000

Catherine Sgro has discovered an artistic way to keep her two children forever young in the manner of the immortal Peter Pan. She paints their portraits. Sonia Stillo, 24, is working in a part-time job, while pursuing her ambition to some day sing in the opera houses of Italy. Limore Twena, 23, is torn between being an artist and a singer, so is settling for both.

All three of them will be showcasing their talents on Sept. 24, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the second annual Vaughan Festival of the Arts 2000 at the City Playhouse at 1000 New Westminster Dr.

"The festival showcases original works of Vaughan's visual and performing artists, including painters, sculptors, photographers and craftspeople, as well as live dance and musical stage performances," said Palma Pallante, chairperson of the Vaughan arts and culture committee.

Last year more than 400 people attended.

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"These are both my kids, my daughter and son," Sgro said as she displayed one of her most recent creations at the Galleria Adonis in Woodbridge. The oil painting depicts Olivia, 3, and Ottavio, 5, building a snowman in a ravine behind their Woodbridge home with a winter landscape forming the background.

"I just finished it last month," said Sgro, explaining "these days I nearly always paint children, either my own or my nieces, nephews and friends."

Which means there will always be a lot of Peter Pans around the Sgro neighbourhood.

"All my works are from photographs," she added. "The ideas come from the top of my head and I then have to get all the props together."

"It takes about three to four months per painting and I don't have a lot of time free because I have two little ones still at home."

Sgro teaches art from her spacious home studio. "But my full-time job is watching my own kids during the week because they are still not in school yet."

Sgro is leaning toward painting limited editions because they command a greater price than commercial reprints.

Several of her originals have sold in the $3,600 range, with prints of the same selling for $200 or more.

Sgro will have a showing of her own at the Galleria Adonis on Dec. 2, when she and her class of 70 youngsters will be displaying their paintings.

The show, Millennium Art Work, will also feature competitions with donated prizes going to the winning canvases.