Catherine Pichura-2
Catherine Pichura in her Harwich studio.
In a previous life, Harwich’s Catherine Pichura was an opera singer and actor who graced the stages of Broadway and throughout Europe. “I was a gypsy, singing all over the world and going from show to show,” she said.
Queen of the Night in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” was perhaps the North Carolina native’s most famous role, but there were many others, including Charity Hope Valentine in “Sweet Charity,” Cinderella in “Into the Woods,” and Carrie Pipperidge in Rogers & Hammerstein’s “Carousel.”
At the height of her career, Catherine’s mother, Patricia Zeggert, was diagnosed with cancer. “I was the only one of six children who was not married and didn’t have children at the time,” she recalled. “She had to go to a home to get treatment and I said I would take a hiatus from my acting to be with her and my dad to help her. I knew my father couldn’t handle it and I needed a rest.”
It was during that time that she met her future husband Rich, a financial planner; the couple have one child, Richard, 24, a musician who owns an artist management company in Los Angeles.
Not long after they were married, Catherine started to get sick. “After a year in and out of the hospital and not figuring it out, finally my husband was like, something is seriously wrong,” Catherine said. “They eventually figured out it was lupus. It was a long journey of getting me back to some kind of semblance of life.”
What happens when life throws you a curveball? It was a question Catherine faced following her diagnosis. “I was on a high dose of medications and your brain is all scrambled, and everything is messed up because you can’t move because you’re in so much pain,” she said, describing the affects of the autoimmune disease. “I came from this life of fun and excitement where I played the lead in all these shows, and everybody wanted to be around me. It was lots of parties and fun, and everyone wanted to be around the fun.
“When you’re sick, those people don’t want to come around anymore,” she continued. “I learned very quickly who my friends were.”
At her lowest point, Catherine was able to find healing, hope, and purpose in the likeliest of places – art. But it’s where she turned – painting, and not performing – that was most surprising of all.
And it was her mom, while battling cancer, who “showed me the courage within,” Catherine said. “She came over one day and gave me some paint and some pastels and said, ‘It is in your genes.’”
Catherine, who is one of nearly three dozen artists taking part in the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod’s (AFCC) Deck the Walls Small Works Art sale this holiday season, comes from a lineage of painters. Her mom is a professional painter and teacher, and her grandmother was an accomplished European oil painter.
In her late 30s, Catherine followed in their paths, using painting as a means of expression. “When I started, I didn’t know what I was doing and said, ‘I hate this,’” Catherine admitted. “But once I got going and I was left alone and I was crying while I was doing it, I realized I was actually telling a story – my story on the canvas. I was expressing what I was feeling in the moment. I was painting my pain.”
Initially, Catherine, who is completely self-taught, was painting figures of women like her, who were in pain and shunned by society. It was cathartic.
“Once I was able to do that, I found I had a voice without my vocal cords,” she said. “I know it sounds very cliché, but art actually saved me.”
About 11 years ago, Catherine had her first solo show in an art gallery in Binghamton, New York, where she sold five of her paintings. “I didn’t think I would sell anything. It wasn’t what I was doing this for,” she said. “But people were so intrigued by the stories behind my paintings and what they meant. That is when it hit me – that everyone was moved by the passion behind them. There was pain, but there was also hope in the expression.”
Art as a form of therapy. That is what Catherine has been exploring ever since.
A little over two-and-a-half years ago, Catherine and her husband purchased a home in Harwich – they had been vacationing on the Cape for over two decades. Earlier this year, Catherine opened PL Studio 440-Atelier at their property on Pleasant Lake Avenue.
Atelier is French for workshop. “It is true to that fashion. It’s not just a class, but about working on ourselves,” explained Catherine, who is using her studio not just to tap into her own creativity, but as a space for others to find healing through art in workshops that she leads.
“When we as humans go through stress or times of unease, the pain has to go somewhere,” said Catherine. “My art isn’t the only way. …It is vital for all of us to find what calls to your heart. We were born of creation so that tells us we can all create. It only takes the strength within us to find whatever calls to us. It is up to each of us, whatever we want to do, whether it’s pen to paper, song to voice, or through dance to express ourselves and to get it out. That is why art is so vital to let it out and do it in a creative way.”