South End's Sanfilippo Attacks the Canvas

How long would you hold out to answer your true calling?

In this age of instant gratification most of us have all the refined patience of a five year old. But resident South End artist Kathryn Sanfilippo hails from a different time when good things came to those who waited… and wait she certainly has. For eighteen years she put her art career aside for the sake of creating a financially stable home environment to raise her son.

“I came here to go to Mass. College of Art in the late ‘60s,” she said over the phone this week. “But, you know, life happens… suddenly I was a single parent. Making a living as an artist has always been a struggle, so I concentrated on finding another way to subsist.”

Sanfilippo ended up buying and renovating property around town, in the South End and the Fenway specifically, when things were still running mighty cheap. At least to some degree, it's an investment that’s since paid off.

“It was difficult breaking into what was mainly a man’s industry. It was a lot like cowboys and Indians: they didn’t want any Annie Oakley’s around,” she recalled with a laugh. “But I wanted to position myself so that perhaps I could get back to my artwork later. That ‘later’ is now.”

She bought her neighborhood home back in 1980, and she’s watched our little bohemian Mecca evolve for forty years. Sanfillippo says that even though the South End may have been more dangerous back then, it’s always been a place that attracts creative people. As she’s observed the area’s transformation, ever more rapid over the last 15 years, she’s witnessed change both positive and maybe not-so-positive.

“My first studio was at 564 Harrison,” she recalled. “We were more of an oddity back then. Very few of us even had studios since there was hardly any designated space available for them. Now it seems like they’re everywhere,” she said, noting that she now rents studio space in the SoWa district at 450 Harrison.

“I love the fact that we have this large community of working artists here and, of course, I can’t complain about being able to walk to work,” she said. “The flipside of that is how much the competition has grown. I feel like it was a bleak market back then and it’s a pretty bleak market now. After all, art is one of the first things people cross off their list when times are tight, and there are so many of us out there. I just got an email earlier that they’re cutting Open Studios down to just one day this year...”

Despite the real estate background, she’s a firm believer in the artists-make-lousy-businesspeople principle, so she recently hired Suzanne Schultz to represent her. So far, the results have been quite promising: she currently has work hanging at Back Bay’s M2L Furniture Gallery and at the Park Plaza Hotel. Soon her paintings will appear as part of a new arts initiative at Neiman Marcus and at 29 Newbury, the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline and the Attleboro Arts Museum.

Sanfilippo has been painting full-time now for six years, although her canvases dictate a lifetime's worth of rich experience. Her decidedly old-school approach keeps her focused on her craft, and while she hopes she can make some semblance of a living as she goes along, that’s not the guiding force fueling her creativity.

“I don’t count on my work selling, but of course I’m very happy when it does,” she said. “I let my emotions and feelings propel my painting; I try not to approach working with a lot of preconceived notions and ideas. I love to grab the brush and really attack the canvas. I just keep painting—every day. I’ve stockpiled quite a collection of canvases, and who knows? If I don’t make any money on them, maybe my son will sometime down the line.”

Kathryn Sanfilippo's studio is located at 450 Harrison Ave #204. Email her at ksanfilipp@aol.com.