Bonnie Heiserman Shelton always knew she wanted to be an artist, even though art was not part of her life when she was growing up on a farm in Appleton City. One of her earliest memories was when she was 3 years old, and went with her parents to the home of Exie Mae Peeler to pay the rent on the property they farmed.
“I still remember being more excited about what was on the walls than the people in the room,” Bonnie said. “I was drawn into the pictures.”
“I learned later they were her artwork.”
Even though there were no art classes in school, Bonnie went on to develop her talents as an artist after she graduated from Appleton City High School in 1965. And wherever she lived, Bonnie created art.
The first weekend in May, Bonnie will be the featured artist at the Mid-Missouri Artist’s 43rd Fine Arts Show in Warrensburg. The show, a free event, will be at the Warrensburg Community Center, 445 E. Gay St., on Saturday, May 4 from 1 to 4 p.m., and Sunday, May 5, from 12:30 to 4 p.m.
Another experience that foreshadowed her career as an artist came in first grade, when Bonnie’s teacher, Mrs. Opal Hunt, challenged her students to create a paper valentine at a class party by taking a piece of red construction paper and folding in it half. Then they had to close their eyes and tear the paper into a heart shape.
“I could ‘see’ and feel the shape as I tore the paper,” she said. “My heart was judged the best.”
By 4th grade, other students were asking her to draw pictures for them. When she was 13, after begging and begging, her mother ordered her a set of oil paints, an easel and brushes from the Sears Catalogue.
“It was quite a big set,” Bonnie recalls. “I still have some of those paintings.”
After high school, she worked as a window display and interiors designer for J.C.Penney, based at Blue Ridge Mall. Marrying Bill Shelton from Montrose took her to Saudi Arabia in 1975, where Bill, who had worked in a bank in Montrose and for TWA, set up an accounting system for an airline.
In Saudi Arabia, Bonnie started teaching art as well as selling her work. The Sheltons came back to the states four years later, and lived in Houston, where Bonnie also taught art, then moved to Jefferson City, which had a very large art community.
Moving back to West Central Missouri, she taught in Warrensburg, Kansas City, Warsaw and Clinton, and was part of the Creative Kids program at First Baptist Church in Clinton. She got a job offer from the North Kansas City school district to teach art classes in the community education program, and also taught classes near Whiteman Air Force base.
In 2019, Bonnie was the first person to win both first place in the professional painting category and Best of Show in the Ike Palmer Art Show during Olde Glory Days.
Bonnie works in all mediums — oils, acrylics, pastels — and paints all subjects. But her favorite is animals — poultry, sheep, cattle, and even camels when she lived in the Middle East. Every painting holds a memory. A winter landscape of a pasture captures a moment when she was a teenager, and she and her father had to go out in a blizzard to the back pasture, where the cows were calving. Another painting records a snowy road through the woods near Jefferson City.
Bonnie’s parents eventually bought the 350 acre-farm in Appleton City from Exie Mae Peeler, Bonnie said. A 1917 graduate of Appleton City High School, Exie Mae is remembered as the pansy lady for growing pansies and taking them around town, according to Linda Lampkin. Exie Mae passed away at the age of 94 in 1993, and in addition to inspiring Bonnie with her artwork, left a monetary legacy to Linda’s church, First Christian in Appleton City, who used it to build a fellowship hall named in her honor.
According to the internet, the name Exie is a variant of the name Axel, a medieval form of the Hebrew name, Absalom, which means “my father is peace,” and presages a child who will be blessed with a serene life.
Serenity is the feeling that comes through in many of Bonnie’s paintings. Bonnie said she admires Edwin Landseer, an English artist known for his paintings of horses, dogs and stags. She also likes the work of French artists William Bouguereau, Jean-Leon Gerome and Rose Bonheur.
Bonnie said she was so busy filling commissions that she turned down the honor of being the featured artist in the Mid-MO art show the first time she was asked. One of Bonnie’s largest commissions was painting a picture of a red farmhouse and outbuildings for a local farmer.
She will have many of her paintings for sale at the May 4 and 5 Fine Arts Show in Warrensburg. The Sunday Jammers will be playing music on Sunday afternoon at the show.
Mid-MO Artists meet on the fourth Thursday of the month at 6:30 p.m. in the Arts and Crafts Room of the Warrensburg Community Center, 445 E. Gay. For program information, go to the Mid-MO Artists Warrensburg, MO Facebook page.
