My Story

And so, it begins!

History

I lived a sheltered and happy life as a child. I was raised in a small town called St. Thomas in Ontario, Canada. I was blessed to live in a beautiful century-old home with both of my parents and my younger brother.

I first started creating art when I was very young (see above!). I can’t remember a time during my childhood when I wasn’t completely infatuated with arts and crafts. I remember in Kindergarten, I refused to go to any other play station other than the “crafts corner”. Furthermore, all of my birthday parties were crafts themed, I went to summer art camps at the local art gallery, and I won every colouring contest I had ever entered in my life (seriously!). I’ll never forget my grade 5 teacher allowing me to teach an art lesson to my classmates in school— we made picture frames out of cardboard and decorated them with paints and other crafty-type things. I remember that teaching my first art class was the most rewarding and exciting experience, even at this young age. That was the moment I realized how much I loved teaching others. 

Looking back from this side of life, I believe I was a very rare and special child. I had a strong internal drive to learn and develop my creative skills as much as possible. Most of the time I preferred to be alone with my art supplies rather than playing with other children. I wrote and illustrated my own children’s books, created little fashion magazines and catalogues, and even started selling my own homemade jewelry at campgrounds during the summers. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was beginning to dream of becoming a creative entrepreneur. All I knew is I loved creating things, selling them to people who valued my work, and most of all, I loved sharing my talents with others.

Education & Stepping Away

I continued to focus heavily on fine art all through high school and started studying painting, photography and videography outside of the regular school curriculum. After completing high school I went to Fanshawe College in London, Ontario and completed a Fine Art Certificate program.

Overall, I enjoyed my time in the program and I learned a lot; however, come the end of the 1 year program I decided to walk away from art all together. It was such a harsh, drastic turn in my life. I completely lost the joy I used to feel while creating. I didn’t enjoy the “grading” aspect of being in art school, and I felt pressure to make art that wasn’t connected to my heart. Creating art no longer served me, and being a full time artist was not an ideal career choice at the time (or so I believed). I constantly thought to myself, “why am I wasting my time?”. So, eventually, I quit completely… for the next 5 years, I didn’t even look at a paintbrush (I know, so sad).

I remember asking my parents to sell all of my art supplies, and I had promised them I was never going to paint again. This came as a shock to everyone (understandably), as no one had ever known me as anything other than an artist. Life continued and I moved onto other things; acquiring my education and career in nursing, becoming a fitness instructor, and travelling the world.

My Saving Grace

In my mid-20s I married who I thought was the love of my life. I moved 4 hours away from my family to be with him, and had a very hard time creating a new life away from home. I was lost, confused, and extremely depressed. This lead to an immense amount of heartbreak and strain on my new “supposed to be fairytale ending” marriage. Art was something that started to slowly creep its way back into my life as I started to search for peace, comfort and familiarity. I was desperate to find something… anything… that made me feel like myself again.

At the time, I was really attracted to painting lotus flowers which symbolize strength and overcoming hardship— through the mud the lotus flower reaches the surface and blooms. I still have my first lotus flower painting hanging in my home studio today to serve as a reminder of where I came from.

With a heavy heart, I got divorced when I was 28 years old and my entire world was turned upside down. I was living on my brothers apartment couch and on a long-term leave from work as a nurse. I was diagnosed with chronic depression and generalized anxiety disorder, and started combating panic attacks which lasted for months. I felt completely debilitated.

I have never been the type of person to let myself fall and keep drowning. Despite the daily battles with my mental health and ending marriage, I decided to try to start painting again because I knew it could help. So, I set up my art supplies in my brothers living room (he is an angel) and I slowly started to find my way back to myself again.

Art gave me something to live for. It gave me a reason to wake up in the morning and to keep trying. It gave me hope, peace and joy during the darkest time of my life. I started to feel like I was connecting to something bigger than myself, which was something I had been craving for a very long time. Art was simply my saving grace.

I decided from that moment on, that I am forever an artist and I will never let that part of me go again. The dream of Caitlyn Mary Art was born, and in May of 2020, I officially registered my fine art business. It has been a beautifully terrifying journey, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

Part of my dream for Caitlyn Mary Art is to give others what art gave me— meaning, connection, healing, belonging, peace, comfort, and joy.

Portraiture & Dance

I clearly remember when I began falling in love with portraiture. When I was about 10 years old my mother bought me a book called “The Faces Book”. It was filled with instructions on how to draw and paint faces. I was very fascinated with the process of drawing faces, and became very passionate about learning how to draw a realistic looking human. From then on, my love for celebrating the human body through art only grew. Eventually, I found dance.

I started dancing when I was 12 years old and quickly fell in love with this new way of expressing myself through movement. Dance and art became my entire life all through my teen and young adult years. I remember it was in grade 12 when I painted my first ballerina painting in black and white oil paints. It was a gift for my dance teacher at the time. That painting still lives in her home to this day. 

I started practicing photographing dancers in when I was in high school and would volunteer my dance friends to model for me. I quickly became obsessed with video and photography, and spent all of my free time doing passion projects with dancers. This is also when I started to paint photos I had taken of dancers, and started to develop my portrait paintings skills with the help of my high school art teacher.

In my early 20s, I started photographing professional dancers and had incredible opportunities to photograph dance events including the FLUX Dance Festival in 2016 in London, Ontario, and the Four Seasons Project with Dasein Dance Company in 2019 in Toronto, Ontario. In 2020, I agreed to partner with Atelier EnPointe, a dance performance company in London, Ontario, as their future photographer, which is very exciting!

Even though I no longer paint portraits, you can still read more about the Ballerina Story and see my past works of dancers >>> click here.