Catherine Vigna

Biography

Mostly self-taught, I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. My fondest childhood memories are of spending endless summer days sitting on the rocks of Georgian Bay, Ontario, with my sketchbooks and pencils, sketching rocks and trees and trying to express my feelings for the place through my drawings.

Because my formal training consisted merely of art classes in school (okay, Robert Bateman was my grade nine art teacher) and a very brief stint at the Dundas Valley School of Art, I think I was allowed the luxury of exploring only areas that interested me; and while aspects of other artists’ work inspired me, I eventually developed a style that was all my own.

Of my four favourite artists, three are Canadian, which is very important to me. The first paintings I ever fell in love with were those of Tom Thompson. To me, they represented the naturalness and freedom and boldness of the Canadian north. The tender works of Claude Monet took my breath away with their softness and subtlety, and still do. Robert Bateman’s reverence of nature, the detail and precision in every inch of his canvasses, is awe-inspiring. And Alex Colville’s painting of “Horse and Train” that I first saw in the Art Gallery of Hamilton mesmerized me with it’s intricate blend of reflection, idealism and realism.

Over the years I've experimented with various mediums, but drawing with pencil and charcoal has always intrigued me the most. The pursuit of achieving the finest nuances of shading, depth, light and intricacy of detail can be both exhausting and exhilarating, but is always fulfilling. Occasionally I’m inspired to add touches of chalk pastel to my drawings — something I’ve done ever since I was young, when I used to “embellish” black and white photographs with dabs of poster paint.

I grew up with a keen appreciation of architecture, and especially love drawing houses in a natural setting. At the same time, old industry fascinates me, and so I can easily spend hours recording with intricate but subtle detail both local industrial buildings and peaceful country homes. Many people commission me to draw their homes, cottages or special places to keep or to give as gifts, especially for Christmas and other memorable occasions. I usually use photographs to work from, either ones I take myself, or client supplied photos.

Life and circumstance brought me from Ontario to British Columbia in 2004, and then to Alberta in 2007. My focus turned to graphic art and website design during that time. While I still enjoy those, and use creativity in business wherever I can, the urge to create more freely led me to develop eclectic graphic art prints that might loosely be termed, “New Age”.

Drawing is and has always been my life’s passion though, so it was inevitable that I would return to what I love best. Art gives me the ability to express who I am and how I see our world. As I grow older, the appreciation and gratitude I feel towards this gift I have been given far surpasses anything I could have experienced in my youth. But even while my older and wiser eyes perceive the evidence that life on Earth will never again be filled with vast canvasses of infinite green spaces, clean skies and pure water, my heart needs to reassure us all that there are always places of remarkable beauty to touch our souls.