Having weathered the greatest loss of her life and the extended period of grieving that followed, Cathy Thomasson rediscovered an underused talent and, with it, a new, transformative purpose in life.
With a singlemindedness born of the certainty that she had found what she was meant to do, she picked up a paintbrush and began to create works of art. In a matter of months, she had produced a body of work sufficient in quantity and quality to fill an exhibit. There were acrylics and watercolors, mixed media and installations drawn from nature — all executed with a mastery that belied the artist’s relatively short foray into the world of visual art.
“Artists make excuses a lot of times, like: ‘Oh, I don’t have the right brushes’ or ‘I don’t have a space to paint,’” Thomasson said. But, “if you really want to do this, there is nothing that will stop you.”
On March 22, she held that exhibit, “Transformation,” at the Blue Jay Listening Room in Jacksonville Beach, a venue owned by her daughter, Cara Murphy. By any measure, it was a success. More than 200 people attended, and she sold 10 pieces.
“I am absolutely still on Cloud Nine from it all,” Thomasson said, adding, “It was an incredibly beautiful, wildly beautiful spiritual journey for me to be able to pull this off and to be able to get the affirmation.”
It confirmed for her that this new direction in life was the real thing.
A mother’s inspiration
“I got my gift of artistic ability from my mom; she was an incredible artist,” Thomasson said.
Growing up on a horse farm in Central Florida, she had always painted pictures and thought that one day she would be an authentic artist, but life gets busy and other priorities tend to displace the dreams of youth.
As a teenager, Thomasson worked in a clothing store, which sparked an interest in fashion design and merchandising. She went on to graduate from Florida State University with a double major in those very disciplines.
She worked in the retail industry and married, and in 1984 moved to Jacksonville, where she remained after her divorce, finally moving to Ponte Vedra Beach in 1988. Formerly a stay-at-home mom, Thomasson went to work in the home-and-gift industry.
In 2011, she and her daughter opened their own home décor and gift store in Jacksonville Beach, Sidney Cardel’s.
The name of the store was inspired by Thomasson’s mother, Sylvia Sidney McCardel Thomasson, who signed her own paintings using only her middle name and dropping the “Mc” from her last name.
The store’s name was a fulfillment of a declaration Thomasson had made to her mother upon graduating from college: that one day she would have an apparel store named Sidney Cardel’s. Though her mother didn’t live to see it, Thomasson never forgot her promise.
In addition to retail sales, Thomasson offered interior design at the store.
A profound tragedy
In October 2014, Thomasson lost the love of her life.
Just two years prior, she had met Peter J. Rodrigues, a co-founder of RPC General Contractors. Before long they were a couple.
But on that October afternoon, Rodrigues, 57, went missing.
The former Navy SEAL and Atlantic Beach resident had taken his 27-foot fishing boat, Sea Witch, out in the morning. News reports say he intended to return in the afternoon, but that didn’t happen. His boat washed ashore at about 6 p.m. at Hanna Park. There was no one on board and the engines were still running.
The Coast Guard, joined by family and friends, searched 80 hours without success.
“He was gone, and we never found him to this day,” said Thomasson. “It took me into a really deep, dark state of depression that I had to find my way out of.”
She said she felt lost for a long time.
“When you go through a traumatic thing, nobody ever tells you how to grieve or how long to grieve or what the rules of grieving are,” she said. “What I’ve learned is there are no rules.”
An important moment came in 2016 when Thomasson’s sister encouraged her to paint something. She bought a canvas and began to paint. Then, she found a linen scarf in her closet and incorporated it into the work. When her sister saw the finished piece, she exclaimed, “You painted a horse!”
And yes, when viewed from the right angle, the scarf looks like a horse, perhaps inspired — albeit subconsciously — by Thomasson’s youth and the horse farm.
The artist named her work “Transformation,” not knowing then that it would become the focal point of her exhibit in March 2025.
Thomasson said she feels Rodrigues’ presence with her every day.
“It’s incredibly comforting,” she said, confident that “I know one day I will see him again.”
A new direction
Thomasson and her daughter closed the store and the end of 2019, just ahead of the COVID-19 chaos. Their timing allowed them to hold a going-out-of-business sale before they would have been forced to close by public health mandates.
Thomasson continued to offer her interior design services, which today can be found at sidneycardels.com.
What painting she did consisted largely of murals in hospitals, restaurants and nurseries and paintings for friends and clients. She never painted anything just for herself.
But with the 10-year anniversary of Rodrigues’ disappearance coming in October 2024, she sensed a change in her life.
She had hurt her back, which made it difficult to carry around a lot of the heavy tools of her interior design trade. She considered retiring but rejected it.
“I’m just not one to sit still,” she said, adding, “I don’t want to ever retire from anything.”
She had read something once that suggested returning to childhood to rediscover one’s talents could help a person identify what he or she really wants to do. The answer for Thomasson was, obviously, art.
“I didn’t know if I would ever find happiness again,” she said. “But this art, this new path in my life has brought me happiness and joy again. It just has opened up this whole new world of color and joy that I didn’t know that I would ever have.”
And, having found this new direction, she began to create.
Transformation
Thomasson hasn’t yet settled on a style that immediately identifies her work. The pieces in her exhibit were eclectic, and she works in different mediums. She enjoys watercolors and mixed media, but her main focus tends to be acrylics.
“I love working with acrylics,” she said. “They are a little difficult, and they dry really fast. That’s why a lot of people like using oils better, because they take so long to dry, and you can manipulate them. But with acrylics, they’re not as forgiving. So, you have to work quickly before it dries. But I like that, too. It kind of makes me work quicker.”
Several of the pieces in the show were abstracts, colorful designs marked by stark black boundaries.
“I love a black outline,” she explained. “I love outlining everything. In my world, it makes it pop.”
Other works realistically depicted horses, often inspired by photos or videos she had seen. Whenever possible, Thomasson tries to get the photographer’s permission before she decides to paint one of these.
A set of three watercolors carry a topographic vibe because Thomasson adds pen-and-ink lines.
“Those pieces are so therapeutic for me, because I can turn on my music and just sit and work on those for hours,” she said. “I love those so much, and I’ll probably do more of those.”
But not everything in the show was a traditional painting.
There was a loveseat, the slipcover of which Thomasson painted to match her abstracts. It marked a connection with her interior design work and was gifted to her through Greg Urso, a family friend who also builds her picture frames. She called Urso, whom she’d met by chance while in Lowes to purchase plywood for some of her works, her “biggest cheerleader.”
Other works featured large, painted roots that Thomasson had rescued.
“I’m literally walking my dog in Atlantic Beach, and my neighbor just had all this yard debris hauled to the street,” she said. “And I see these giant roots. I look at them every day for about a week. And then, I’m like: I’ve got to do something with these roots!”
So, seeing potential sitting right before her, she “went in there like a banshee, and I pulled out some of the coolest roots.”
She took them home, washed and painted them and mounted them on the plywood she’d been purchasing that day at Lowes.
Thomasson is already planning her next show, which like the first will be held at the Blue Jay Listening Room. The date is Nov. 22.
