Vangi Cathcart, Painter
How delighted I was as a young child to make something and create it with my hands. My formal training in the creative arts started in a summer camp where I was introduced to crafts. After four years experience at Camp Saugatucket I was invited to be a counselor and teach others the crafts I had mastered.
In high school I studied the traditional visual arts. However it was my drama teacher who influenced me to develop my art on stage, where I learned make up, costuming, set design and acting. After highs school I was a member of a theater group for ten years putting my acquired skills to work.
Raising a family in my young adult years provided time pursuing crafts again when I learned basket weaving, folk art painting on metal and wood, and painting on fabrics. I was a member of a collective group of artists who jointly sold our work at craft fairs and boutiques.
My approach to art is to express myself creatively in gratitude for the life giving energy I have been blessed with. The acknowledgement of gratitude gave me the desire to help others. I chose to return to college as an adult to obtain a formal education to help others through art. My goal was to become an Art Therapist and I majored in Art and Psychology receiving a Bachelor of Arts Degree in two majors.
In graduate school I intended to major in Art Therapy. However, after a mid life crises I learned that art was my therapy and changed my major, graduating with a degree in Counseling Psychology. For the past twenty five years in my counseling practice I have devoted my life to the healing arts, using my art skills to compliment my counseling skills. My art became my hobby.
My art hobby led me to create artful objects with clay. For ten years I studied pottery at the Wesleyans Potters and Greenleaf Pottery in Connecticut. It is there I witnessed brush painting on pottery and obtained a desired to learn more about brush painting. Because of a fascination and strong interest in the Asian culture I joined the Sumi-e Society to learn the traditional technique of ink/watercolor paintings on rice paper. For ten years I have been studying this form with Sumi-e artist instructors and at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where I have had the opportunity to exhibit In shows and galleries selling my paintings.
