Cathy McMillan — caricature artist/ mixed media artist/ instructor

In the summer of 1984, after returning from travels in the South Pacific, Cathy was offered a job drawing caricatures at West Edmonton Mall. Totally smitten by the challenge and the love of meeting and drawing people, the focus of her art career changed completely. After art college and a few years of illustration work and costume designing, Cathy decided that sitting in an office wasn’t what being an artist was about, so she packed up her ’72 Super Beetle with her easel and felt pens and set off on festival circuits and mall art show tours. Whether in Tofino on Vancouver Island, Ottawa, or in Calgary during the ’88 Winter Olympics, she always managed to find willing customers to be drawn. When back in Edmonton, Cathy was often invited to teach with the “Artist in the Classroom Program” and in the Young Artists and Authors Conferences, and was commissioned to illustrate colouring books, video covers, theatre posters, murals, and portraits. In 1989 she was asked to play a courtroom artist in the movie Small Sacrifices, and spent time talking with and drawing Farrah Fawcett, Gordon Clapp and Ryan O’Neal.

After getting married in England in 1993, Cathy spent the following three years traveling the world as a caricature artist (with her husband Mark); drawing at most of the Canadian Fringe Festivals during the summers and traveling Internationally in the winters; living on a kibbutz in Isreal, traveling Great Britain, northern Europe, the Cook Islands, cycling New Zealand, Australia and Thailand. In 1997, Cathy moved back to Edmonton and soon after started the Quirky Art Café. She draws at numerous corporate and private events, festivals and trade shows throughout the year. In 2007 Cathy joined ISCA (International Society of Caricature Artists) and loves the connections she has made with other caricature artists from around the world. Attending the yearly ISCA convention (in the USA) is definitely a highlight each year.

Over the past nine years, Cathy has also been involved with some very exciting and interesting illustration projects, including the award winning educational CD seriesZoology Zone, the children’s television show Wildfiles – web site: (www.wildfiles.tv), the Mom’s List Book, Adventures in Natural Childbirth (Marlowe & Co, NY 2005) and since the spring of 2005, Cathy does the illustrations, design and layout for Birth issues Magazine.

Along with her cartoon portraits and illustrations, Cathy has always pursued other mediums of creative expression — painting, writing, drawing, and mixed media. In 1993, she began attending classes at Sutton Art School and since 1995 has attended the professional artist’s critique group (as often as she could). Her mentor Eileen Raucher Sutton has not only taught her more about art than Cathy even knew there was to learn, but also about “believing, thinking and living” as an artist in this world of ours. For the past decade, while very busy with her 3 children, Cathy channeled most of her “non-caricature” work into her sketchbooks and journals—over 150 filled books to date. It was during this time that she was introduced to the creative journals of Sabrina Ward Harrison and Teesha Moore. Cathy was very inspired by their styles and the fact that creative journaling was considered an art form in itself. In 2003, while continuing on her own obsessive journaling path, Cathy began teaching classes and workshops in creative journaling and mixed media techniques. In 2007, Cathy finally started painting outside of her journals again. What emerged was a fresh and creative combination of paint, written words, stamping, collage and illustration. She is currently painting a series of work called “Life’s Layers”.

Currently Cathy lives in Edmonton with Mark and their three children, Ryllan, Kieran and Piper.