In eighth grade Surita Essex took art class once a week in her tiny Illinois school.
One week she completed a pastel drawing of a sunset over the water.
“I remember my art teacher – who was also a principal, superintendent, sixth grade teacher and eighth grade teacher – saying she was going to keep it and put it on display.”
Six decades later, after the school had undergone several consolidations, Surita’s sister called to tell her that her composition was still on exhibition.
Although art had been one of her passions as a youngster, she set it aside while she became a teacher, speech therapist, wife and mother. She picked it up again when she and husband, Ben, moved to the Village of Silver Lake.
Surita was born in a log cabin in the Smokey Mountain-Appalachian country of Tennessee, near Dandridge, one of six children. Her father was a tobacco farmer, neither rich nor poor.
“We each had two pairs of shoes,” she recalls. “A house pair and a Sunday pair. But we often went barefoot.”
“We were a pretty religious Bible belt family, so we went to church a lot – Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. We had electricity, but we didn’t have running water or indoor toilets. But we always seemed to have food on the table.”
While her family were not into visual arts, they were certainly talented.
“They sang at church and my father would play the harmonica and play the Jews harp. And he was always breaking out in song, singing Hank Williams, Sr. and a lot of the old country and western songs.”
When Surita was about six the family moved to a new farm in Illinois near Rochelle, about 80 miles west of Chicago.
“It was an area where the land was very fertile, very black dirt. We raised raised all kinds of things like corn, barley and soybeans. So, it was very different than in Tennessee.”
But after high school her art went on hold. She attended Northern Illinois University and obtained a masters degree in speech language pathology and a second Masters in pupil services, ending up Green Bay, WI as the director of pupil services in the special education area. She retired from Lake Geneva Schools.
“I went to work, got married, started a family and attended college part time – for the next 26 years. When I got home from work I was just too tired to paint!”
“After college I wanted to get a job, make some money, work with kids and use what I learned.” Her early work would become a training tool for others.
“We had a clinic at Northern where the speech and language students would work with clients. I was video-taped and they used that tape for years to teach incoming students how to do certain techniques with a stroke victims.”
She didn’t really paint again until 2008, taking lessons at Rock Valley College.
“At first I took Chinese brush painting with Stella Dobbins and then I took watercolor painting with Tom Linden. He would go around and look at all the old barns that were about ready to fall down in that area of the country, preserving the history.”
The road to The Villages had a few twists and turns for Surita and Ben.
“We started vacationing down here for a month or two in 2011, just to try it out. We bought in 2014 and we really liked the Historic Side because it’s so quiet with very little traffic. I looked at right away for art classes that I could get involved with.”
That has included batik as well as watercolor on rice and regular art paper. She admits that painting sometimes consumes her and she loses track of time. “I just enjoy it. It’s like reading a good book that takes your mind completely off of everything else. I find myself painting sometimes in the afternoon and then my husband saying at seven or eight o’clock: ‘Are we going to eat supper?’”
One of the aspects of painting she enjoys most is getting out with other artists. “I carry all my supplies around in a suitcase on rollers. Sometimes I say I think I’d like to have a bigger studio, but I’m not sure because then I don’t know if I would get out with other artists. You always learn from them.” She also says she would like to take more workshops with well-known artists. “I just went to a workshop with Linda Ferris, who’s a great artist, and some of the things that I learned there I haven’t finished yet.”
While she participates in a number of craft shows in The Villages, much of Surita’s work is purchased by friends and neighbors who see the “art wall” in her home. She sometimes has prints made from the originals along with note cards.
“Of course, everyone wants an original,” she laughs. “So, if they see a print, I end up making another original version of the same thing.”
Painting is not her only avocation in The Villages. “I line dance, I do yoga, I have art classes, I paint with groups in open studio and I clog,” Surita says. Currently she’s working on a series of beach scenes with children, inspired by a visit from her granddaughter years ago.
“Jessica, who is going to be 23 in May, came to Florida when she was three. And, so I’m doing these little paintings of girls on the beach for her birthday.”
John W Prince is a writer and Villages resident. Learn more at www.GoMyStory.com.
