About the Artist

Purple Pelican Gallery owner Esa Everroad is the artist in residence. She has spent virtually all her adult life practicing a variety of art forms. She began selling her drawings to classmates as early as Junior high school for candy money. She is largely self-taught and because of that, her work is always unique and unaffected.

Esa also personally and carefully chooses each craft piece for the gallery from the best shows in the US,  meeting each artisan and buying their best work for her unique clients. "I don't buy art for myself when I attend a wholesale show. I know and understand my client base, and I buy with their tastes in mind. That's my job and that's what's rightly expected in an artist-owned gallery. A high level of creative instincts and an open mind with  an 'other' sensibility." Esa

Esa's first job was as a studio model for a gallery in the Gaslight Square District of St. Louis, in 1969. She has been a fashion model, singer/songwriter, radio announcer, motivational speaker, interior decorator, graphic artist and web designer, fabric artist, seamstress, counselor, cook, life coach, mother, grandmother and recently a great-grandmother.

For many years, Esa was a contemporary gospel singer/songwriter with 13 music albums to her credit, performing for audiences numbering over a quarter of a million people in more than 250 churches in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. 

She's a published poet and her award-winning piece titled Purple Bearded Pelican inspired the name of her gallery. She and Terry, her husband of 50 years, moved to Spooner in 2005 having lived many years in artistic hot spots St. Augustine, Florida and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.