Evelyn Ecale Schultz, a prominent local artist who started her painting career after raising seven children, was a passionate mentor and leader in the west suburban art community.
Mrs. Schultz, 73, of Elmhurst, died Thursday, April 21, in Alexian Brothers Medical Center, Elk Grove Village, after a brief illness.
Mrs. Schultz was an all-media artist in realistic and abstract genres who specialized in watercolors and had permanent collections at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, the Elmhurst Art Museum, the Beverly Arts Center in Chicago and the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace. She also presented one-person exhibitions at more than a dozen places, including Navy Pier, Loyola University Medical Center and Hinsdale Public Library and participated in 11 outdoor art fairs.
Mrs. Schultz was a longtime advocate for the arts in the western suburbs. She was president of the Elmhurst Artist Guild for six years and a driving force behind construction of the Elmhurst Art Museum, for which she was secretary of the board. In addition, she was vice president of the Senior Art Network in Chicago.
Her family and friends remembered that, apart from being a talented and prolific artist, Mrs. Schultz took great joy in helping other artists, particularly those who, like herself, had placed their art on hold while tending to other responsibilities.
“She just had a giving nature, and that’s probably why she loved the arts,” said her daughter Karen Rantis. “She loved that personal connection. She loved meeting other artists.”
Bruce Peterson, a friend and artist from Elmhurst, said, “She encouraged a lot of people and she helped a lot of people. She taught them to see things in a different way.”
Born on the North Side of Chicago, Mrs. Schultz graduated from Lake View High School and studied art education and advertising at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she met her future husband, Robert Schultz, an aspiring architect.
They married in 1955 and moved to Elmhurst shortly afterward.
Mrs. Schultz and her family remained on the same block in Elmhurst for the rest of her life, moving into her parents’ home across the street in the early 1970s after they died. She started painting in 1992, at age 60. Once she returned to painting, she pursued it vigorously, friends and relatives said.
“She really kind of painted anything she could get her hands on,” Rantis said, chuckling. That included mailboxes and windows. She even decorated the envelopes of holiday cards she sent to friends and family.
Mrs. Schultz’s work was recognized locally and nationally. She routinely won Best of Show awards at local competitions and had achieved signature status membership in 12 national art societies.
In her artist’s statement, Mrs. Schultz wrote that her art “is more about what I feel than what I see. I usually create paintings that are more abstract and non-objective than realistic, although I work in a variety of genre.”
She noted that “past experiences, historic events and people and places that have influenced my life work their way into my art in the imagery.”
“Evelyn had the heart of an artist,” said Elmhurst artist Karen Exiner, a friend and muralist who shared a studio with Mrs. Schultz for six years. “She was a true artist. She was always willing to try a new medium. She was always experimenting.”
In addition to her husband and daughter, Mrs. Schultz is survived by two other daughters, Robin Brower and Jennifer Kaiser; four sons, Kenneth, Erik, Steven and Jason; a brother, Henry Ecale; a sister, Margaret Campbell; and eight grandchildren.
Visitation will be held from 3 to 8 p.m. Monday in Ahlgrim Funeral Home, 567 S. Spring Rd., Elmhurst. Services will be private.
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