Philadelphia-based figurative painter and portraitist Sylvia Castellanos emigrated to the United States from her native Cuba as a child in 1959. Drawing--and particularly doing people-- was an instinctive urge from childhood, and by her early teens she was regularly receiving modest  commissions. Since then she has executed hundreds of works whose subjects range from Washington dignitaries to Central American campesinos. 2005 was an  exciting year, with two important exhibitions, including one at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Organization of American States.

Her adult life has been full of many activities, both inside and outside the art world.  After obtaining a B.A. in Romance Languages from Emory & Henry College, Sylvia earned a Master’s degree and became a doctoral candidate at Princeton University. Moving to Washington, D.C. in the early seventies, for the remainder of the decade she combined holding the prestigious position of Research Director of the Senate Steering Committee with  doing commissioned portraits  for clients prominent on Capitol Hill,  including several Senators and important Senate officials. During that time also, a portrait she executed  of Alexander Solzhenitsyn came to be in the collection of singer Pat Boone, who purchased it at an auction in which he served as Master of Ceremonies.

Also during this period Sylvia was fortunate to do advanced work in  portraiture with the successful Washington artist Danni Dawson, a protégé of the legendary Nelson Shanks of Philadelphia. 

In 1980 Sylvia moved to Guatemala City, Guatemala, initiating a long association with that region. She launched her career as a figurative painter with a one-man exhibit at INGUAT, the state tourism office. This led to a thriving business. As a reflection of her success, in the early nineties she was honored to be asked by then-President Jorge Serrano to execute a portrait gallery of all past Guatemalan presidents (regrettably, insufficient funds made it impossible to execute the project).

No less significantly, however, this period marked the beginning of a project that was to absorb her for a long number of years. In Guatemala she discovered the civilization of the modern-day Mayas. Against a backdrop of mountains and volcanoes, and impervious to European influences, the Indian inhabitants continue wearing their traditional garments, speaking their native Maya dialects, and following their ancestors' way of life.  Fascinated both by their exotic appearance and the depth of their humanity, Sylvia embarked on a collection of portraits of the modern-day Mayas, intended as a picture essay of the nation’s character at the level of the common man. The collection of sixty-two black and white portraits, begun in the 1980s, was only completed in the year 2000. 

In  1992, the partially-completed collection came to the attention of U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Thomas Strooke and Mrs. Strooke, who invited Sylvia to do a showing at their private residence in Guatemala City for several hundred members of the government, the diplomatic corps, and the private sector. The setting of the residence rather than the public gallery created for that purpose was a conspicuous honor, as was Mrs. Strooke’s gesture, on the appointed evening, of taking down from the walls all her personal decorations, giving Sylvia a free hand to hang her own.

Recognition in another sphere came in 1999, when Glencoe-McGraw-Hill chose one of the portraits for inclusion in Glencoe Literature: The Reader’s Choice: American Literature, a text distributed nationwide. She has discussed the portraits, too, on Latino television interview programs in Philadelphia and Boston.

In 2005 Sylvia received a signal honor when she was invited to exhibit this collection at the headquarters of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. The exhibits at the OAS center around the artwork of the leading artists in Latin America.

In recent years, Sylvia executed a portrait of Philadelphia City Council President, Anna Verna, the latest in a line of interesting commissions. Other recent projects include work for officials at the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and the Organization of American States.  She complements these works with figurative paintings whose subjects are of her choosing.

In response to a request, Sylvia, who constantly seeks innovation, embarked on a project of executing over a dozen large canvases in the style of  European religious oil paintings in the styles of the 15^th to 17^th centuries. In July of 2006, the collection was very successfully  exhibited at Casa Santo Domingo, an extraordinary, converted 16^th century monastery in Antigua, Guatemala.

A web site,http://www.sylviacastellanos.net, serves as an electronic art gallery displaying a large part of her work. While the subjects and the moods of the pictures cover a broad stylistic range, the emphasis is always on exploring the subject’s mood with sensitivity and on capturing the person’s spirit. By preference, indeed, Sylvia has never strayed outside depicting people, a subject of endless fascination for her.