By Emily Beckett
Sue Anne Bakich Hoyt surrounds herself with color.
A freshly painted magenta chest of drawers pops against the pale, whitewashed grain of her dining room walls, and in the center of the table, a vase of vibrant orange, yellow and red flowers from her garden sits in a patch of sunlight.
Hoyt, 67, said the chest was brown before she painted it magenta on a whim one day.
“I like to just see how much I can get away with,” Hoyt said. “That’s the nice thing about color. You can always paint over it.”
She wasn’t always so adventurous with the bright hues that now decorate her house and yard, and she wasn’t always sure she wanted to make art the focus of her college studies, and later, her career.
But all hesitations aside, Hoyt and art have always been as inseparable as her hand and a drawing pencil.
“I always drew growing up,” she said. “My mother got me Paint by Number sets growing up, but as far as really painting, it really wasn’t until I went back to college in the early ’90s.”
She still remembers vividly the smell of her father’s paint box, which mesmerized her as a child.
“He loved to do artwork, and I have memories of his paint box with the oil paints and the smell of the oil paint,” Hoyt said. “Always very intriguing. I was allowed to open it up and look at it, but of course, as a child (I) couldn’t mess with those.”
“I saw both parents interested in painting,” she said. “I’m sure that validated it for me that it was a good thing to do.”
But like her access to that treasured paint box, Hoyt’s childhood was complicated; not without happiness, but certainly tinged with loss and change.
Through it all, art stayed with her.
Changing canvas
Hoyt’s father, Michael Bakich, was in the United States Air Force and was stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery when he met Hoyt’s mother, Mary Sue Olson of Clanton.
The two married and moved to Florida after Bakich was transferred there.
He was killed in Korea when Hoyt was 6.
“That had a profound impact on me,” Hoyt said. “I had a brother and a sister younger than me, so my mother was left with three small children.”
A year later, Olson met and married Hoyt’s stepfather, Ed Olson, who worked in parks and recreation.
They opened a camp for children at their ranch and offered horseback riding.
“My mother used to paint figurines and do a little oil painting herself when I was very young, but once they got the camp, she didn’t do any more of that,” Hoyt said. “My mother and my stepdad both had a real love for nature and the outdoors.”
Hoyt graduated from high school, went straight to college and started as an art major, but she said she “chickened out” and got a degree in sociology instead.
She married and had three children, and she and her first husband eventually divorced.
“There was always that unfinished business of the artwork,” she said. “The fact that I was scared was reason enough to do it. I went back to the University of South Florida and basically kind of started over as an art major.”
She took classes for drawing, design and painting and logged countless hours of studio time.
“I took my first color course and got completely hooked on color,” she said.
Her hunger for more concentrated instruction in color and design led her to the Portland School of Art, now known as Maine College of Art, where she graduated with a B.F.A. in painting.
“I started out as a realist,” she said. “When I went to Maine College of Art, I began to paint abstractly because I really wanted to focus on color instead of so much on the human figure, which is so seductive. There’s just this pull to bring the figure back in the work.”
Hoyt and her second husband, Arthur, moved back to Alabama to be closer to family, and she received and accepted a fellowship at Auburn University for the master’s program in art.
Connecting through art
Hoyt met Arthur while living and working in Florida, and during that time, she became a Christian.
“He saw such a big change in me that he got interested in reading the Bible and decided that made sense to him,” she said. “Then, we said, ‘Well, we need to get married.’ We’ve been married for 34 years now.”
In addition to their children, they have multiple grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
“The light of my life are my grandchildren. They’re just terrific,” Hoyt said. “They all love to do artwork. I’ll paint with them. They do stuff, and I go, ‘I wish I had done that!’”
In college, Hoyt disciplined herself to use color and design in ways her professors deemed effective.
Now, she allows herself more freedom to respond to her artwork, more freedom to use bright colors and more freedom to feel first and think later.
Her faith permeates her work as she tries to create Christian art that reflects her relationship with God and ideas from scripture.
And although a stigma is attached to the word beauty in art circles, Hoyt said, she strives for it in her work.
“Beauty is important to me,” she said. “It’s kind of seen as trite, but you look at what God creates, and you see what scripture says about beauty. That’s good enough for me to validate it.”
Ministry in the making
In her custom-built studio located in her backyard, Hoyt spends hours painting, sketching or simply giving her creativity free reign with the different media she has.
Oil paints are the heart of most of her pieces, but acrylic paints and water media surface from time to time.
Meanwhile, she is surrounded by hers and others’ artwork she has collected over the years.
The artistic vein in Hoyt’s family extends through her siblings, who express their creativity in different outlets, such as cooking and landscaping.
“They are creative people in their own way,” she said. “I believe everybody is. I just believe we’re created in the image of God, and He’s first and foremost a creator. I see everybody as creative, just in different ways.”
It is that mindset, perhaps, that has helped Hoyt become involved with collaborative efforts with other artists and organizations.
From making art to be auctioned for charitable causes to helping with art sessions in Clanton Elementary’s afterschool program Tiger Trails, Hoyt is willing to share what she knows for the good of her community.
“I really, really like to see kids doing artwork,” she said. “They put so much effort into what they do. It’s just so neat to see them create things. You hope they stick with it and keep on making something.”
Hoyt sells her artwork when the opportunity arises, but more often than not, she ends up giving them away to family members and friends or keeping them in her house or studio.
She has coped with vision problems for years and underwent a corneal transplant about three years ago, but vast improvement in one eye has given her hope for overall better vision in the years to come.
“It’s been very hard to read and paint and do things with vision issues,” Hoyt said. “But I’m ready to get back in there, and sometimes those breaks are good. Kind of get a fresh start.”
With her newfound bravery in exploring the full spectrum of color, Hoyt will continue creating art that might speak of her training, her faith and her passion for painting.
“I feel a burden to have my art be quality because I think it should be,” she said. “It’s very serious business to me. It’s not to make money. It’s more of a life mission.”
To see more on Hoyt and her artwork, visit www.excellentartist.com/sue-anne-hoyt.html, www.absolutearts.com/sueanne/ or sueannehoyt.com/.