December Artist of the Month
Meet Bobbie Suratt
For Bobbie Suratt, art has always been a big part of her life. She majored in art at Ohio Wesleyan University and at that time focused on ceramics. She bought a kiln and a wheel and sold her works in local shows. When she and her husband had their children, Suratt realized that working in clay was not practical so she began quilting. She quilted for 30 years while raising her children in Weston, Connecticut. She also painted on and off during this time.
In the next phase of Suratt’s life, she lived abroad with her family. In the 1990’s, they lived in London where she studied portrait painting. Tokyo was next and after Tokyo, they moved to Manhattan for a year. “We lived right around the corner from the Art Students League of New York. I had decided a couple years before that I wanted to focus solely on painting. The classes at the Art Students League met, for the most part, every day. They were in portrait and figure, and some plein air landscape in Central Park in the summer. It was heaven!”
“Then we received a phone call letting us know that we would soon be grandparents of twins.” They took the opportunity to move to the Boston area to be near their son and his growing family. Settling in Wellesley, Suratt created a lovely art studio on the third floor of their home. Living here, she was able to care for and enjoy both her parents (in Weston) and her grandchildren (in Wayland). The joy of family is evident in her paintings, many of which are of her loved ones. Shown here are exquisite paintings of her grandchildren.
Suratt keeps busy continuously learning. When she first moved to the Boston area, she studied at the MFA and then in Cambridge with Brett Gamache. She later found inspiration in many wonderful teachers, including Eli Cedrone and Jeanne Rosier Smith. She has done workshops with Eli Cedrone in Bermuda and Fiesole, Italy just outside of Florence and with Jeanne Rosier Smith working with pastels on the Amalfi Coast and in Little Compton, Rhode Island. She has also studied with John MacDonald on Cape Cod and Kathy Anderson in CT.
Recently Suratt has taken advantage of “classes all over the world,” one of the many silver linings of the pandemic. One interesting one was a self-portrait class with Zoey Frank of Colorado, and a floral class with Paul Foxton in the U.K. She is currently studying portrait and figure with Dominique Medici, who is teaching from Seattle.
Suratt is a valued member of the WSA where she has served on the Board and as past President for five years. She is also a member of the Needham Art Association and the Dedham Art Association. The profits from the sale of her paintings go to the support her favorite charities. One close to her heart is PEO International which focuses on providing educational opportunities for female students worldwide.
Suratt ends our interview with, “I love the act of painting but I’m also always striving to do better. I keep looking forward to my next painting and I think, ‘Maybe this one will be my masterpiece.”
