PERSONALITIES: Painting sparks joy for local artist

May 13—Growing up in the 1950s in Erie, Pennsylvania, Carolyn Emerson wanted to be a teacher, and although she never stood in front of a chalkboard, she has been teaching art through much of her life.

After graduating from Smith College with a bachelor's degree in early education in 1961, she said, she didn't go on to teach. Instead, she quickly became pregnant in her first marriage and focused on raising a family, eventually having three children.

"All through my life though," she said, "I painted."

Carolyn Emerson

Who she is: Artist, president of Manchester Art Association.

Hometown: South Windsor.

Quote: "All through my life I painted."

Her life as an artist started in first grade, she said, when students were asked to draw pictures themed around the holidays.

"My picture as a first grader was chosen for the cover of for the Christmas program and that was it," she said. "Ever after that, people always expected things from me and I rose to the occasion, I guess, but I always loved it."

She said she and her first husband moved to an apartment in Hartford, where he worked at Hartford National Bank while she had their first child and ran a daycare.

"We bought our first house in West Hartford right across the street from Fern Ridge Park," Emerson said. "That's where my children grew up. My husband and I, we would buy houses that needed work and we would fix them up and we would sell them and we'd live in them while we were fixing them up. It took us four or five years to do each one."

While her youngest child was attending Whiting Lane Elementary in West Hartford, Emerson said, she suggested to the principal that some sort of artwork was needed for the high-ceilinged, blank-walled front hall. The project was green-lit, and that led to her working at the school.

A new career became necessary because she and her husband divorced after 20 years of marriage.

"I had to make some money, so I formed a business, a super graphics business, which was a very popular thing at the time and I put together a portfolio," she said.

From the ground up

Emerson started working on designs and mockups to shop around to local architects. At the time, her daughter was hospitalized from a bad automobile accident, and Emerson spent eight weeks at her bedside drawing.

"I had at the time a job as an office person in a new business. I left that and I sat in her hospital room and for eight weeks I just designed and designed and designed and did these big mockups to scale," she said.

"They (the local architects) began asking me to do walls and decoration work in places where they were doing their thing and word spread," she said. "I got a lot of jobs not from architects, but I got a lot of jobs from other people who saw my work and just hired me. So I did that for five or six years."

During that time, she said, she remarried and moved to Virginia, where they lived for 20 years.

"The school system there had no art and I was pretty quickly bored," she said. "So I went to work as a volunteer in several schools teaching art in Orange County. I went to every Board of Education meeting for a long time to lobby for an art program. It finally paid off after three years."

While in Virginia, she moved from teaching in schools to teaching retired people and a local painters group in Mineral, Virginia, she said.

"I did that for the rest of my time in Virginia," she said. "My husband passed away after 20 years and I moved back here in 2006 because all of my children lived in New England."

Joined the art association

After returning to Connecticut — now living in South Windsor — in 2012 she became involved with the Manchester Art Association, where she currently sits as president of the association and has instituted an open studio, where she teaches painting.

"That continues on," Emerson said. "It was at the old Y in Manchester, but we lost that space and we found a new space at the Manchester Church of Christ on Tolland Turnpike in Manchester.

"I belonged to the Unitarian Universalist Society: East here in Manchester and I met people there and they kept saying, Carolyn, you should join the Manchester Art Association. You would really like it," she said. "So I did."

The association has a rotating gallery of work on display in the atrium of Manchester Town Hall. It's current theme focuses on the town's bicentennial, occurring this year.

"As long as I have been a member I had exhibits here," she said of the town hall. "They change out every three months, but this coming year we are shortening that period of two months, so there will be six exhibits a year, and three of them will be themed as this one is."

The exhibits focus on a specific medium, such as pastels, watercolor, or oil works, or focus on a theme.

The current exhibit features works by artists that highlight iconic Manchester locations such as Case Mountain, the Cheney Homestead, Cheney Hall, Wickham Park, and Highland Park.

"I think everybody painted for this exhibit. Our requirements in the theme was the bicentennial, that you paint something of Manchester, it could be a landscape, it could be a building, it could be a feeling, whatever. We were really pleased with what we received this time. People can make their paintings for sale or not."

Emerson said the association means everything to her and intends to stay involved with the association for a long time.

"My friends are in the art association by and large," she said. "There are friends from church who are not, but I'm doing art there too. We just formed a little group called the Aesthetic Committee. There are a lot of artists in that church, so we're gonna take advantage of them and keep art flowing."

For coverage of local restaurants, cultural events, music, and an extensive range of Connecticut theater reviews, follow Tim Leininger on Twitter: @Tim_E_Leininger, Facebook: Tim Leininger's Journal Inquirer News page, and Instagram: @One_Mans_Opinion77.