Sandy Cline was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, just before WW2. Undaunted by wartime shortages, he took to carving toys out of wood. In high school, having been told that he had no talent for the arts, Sandy, true to his adventuresome spirit, signed up for draughting. While working as a draughtsman for the Department of National Defense in Ottawa, he made frequent visits to the National Gallery of Canada, inspired by the paintings of Lawren Harris and nudged by a few of the artists he was associating with steered him into a less mechanical visual expression. He began oil painting.

After Sandy met his wife Rita they began living in pre-trendy Yorkville of Toronto, - the beginning of a lifelong partnership. He painted, but to make ends meet in Toronto, he would carve wooden pendants and other objects to sell to the tourists in the coffee houses. When it was pointed out to him that he was a better carver than a painter, Sandy changed his medium once again, first carving in wood and later changing to stone.

Forty-five years later, Sandy is still working his craft full-time although he has taken time out to pass on his great wealth of knowledge and experience to fledging artists at the Haliburton School of Fine Arts and the William Holland School in Georgia.

"Each carving I make is a statement, where I leave little bits of my emotions and my feelings. You become part of the piece, and you can feel that it is right." he says. "You have to work with the stone because if you try to make it into something it doesn't want to be, it will break. "

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