Sarasota artist finds peace at Historic Spanish Point

In a cottage on the shores of Sarasota Bay, Norma Albertha Winter has created a personal Eden.

Tucked away in a second floor room of the White Cottage at Historic Spanish Point, she spends her days painting native botanicals on 5-by-5-foot canvases.

The flowers are larger than life against their white backdrops.

Surrounded by her work and an uninhibited view of Sarasota Bay, Winter, 82, finds a peace rooted in a purpose.

“It gives me a life when I see I can help,” Winter said. “I can put some beauty in the lives of other people.”

She credits Martha Baker of the AARP Foundation in Sarasota with the opportunity.

Winter moved to Venice in 2010 from Wellington in Palm Beach County. She taught art at Epiphany Cathedral Catholic School and managed the summer programming at Venice Art Center. Health issues, however, made it difficult to maintain employment.

Her resume tells the story of a young woman from Jamaica who graduated in 1966 from art school in New York City. In the decades that followed, she owned a small business, and was a commissioned artist and an elementary teacher for children with special needs.

Yet, despite her experience, her options were few after recovering from her illness.

“I went through a very depressed time,” Winter said. “I have all this within me. Where can I put it? As if nobody wants what I have because they are looking at the picture, not looking at what’s in the package.”

But Winter is not one to wallow. Grounded in her faith, she believes in a divine plan. She wears a pendant of Mary called the Miraculous Medal around her neck. However, her actions speak of a woman who doesn’t wait idly for the hand of God to move.

She said she felt the Lord had brought her to Venice for a purpose, but that purpose seemed elusive as she continued to search for employment.

“I felt that the Holy Spirit brought me here for a reason because it was difficult,” Winter said. “But I kept searching because I knew there was something here for me.”

In summer 2016, she found herself in Sarasota, lost.

She was on her way to see Baker.

Baker is the director of AARP’s  Senior Community Employment Service Program, which partners with area nonprofits, offering training opportunities for unemployed seniors.

“We find that when no one wants you … your self worth is questioned,” Baker said. “So it gives them a reason to get up, have a purpose, get dressed, shower and feel like you’re giving something and getting something.”

Participants must be over 55, unemployed and on a limited or fixed income. Winter was a fit.

Unfamiliar with Sarasota, she took the bus, but found herself 17 blocks from her destination at noon in the peak of summer.

“Now when you find yourself in a hot place like this what do you do?” Winter remembered asking herself. “Do you just lay down and die or what? No, you better make it. So I started singing, and I sang my way all the way to 17th Street.”

Showing a resilience typical of her character, Winter, then 81, made it to Baker’s office and was accepted into the program.

She was matched with Historic Spanish Point in September. The Sarasota County heritage site needed 11 paintings for its conference hall.

So that’s where she spends her days, surrounded by beauty and paint. In many ways her story isn’t unique. There are 55 Sarasota County seniors participating in the AARP program, and 89 between Sarasota and Charlotte counties.

“Life doesn’t end,” Baker said. “There is a purpose.”

For Winter her purpose is her art.

“I’m not falling apart,” Winter said. “This came about and I’m thinking this is what I was supposed to do. I was

“It just makes me feel free.”

-Norma Albertha Winter

supposed to go through the hot sun. I was supposed to do all these things to get to where I want to go.”

Participants can remain in the program for four years, but after she finishes her paintings at Historic Spanish Point, Winter will be reassigned. With just four more flowers to paint, including a large painting of a wild cotton flower, Winter said she is nervous about what comes next.

But she has chosen not to dwell on that. Instead she focuses on the beauty of the moment, how the bright colors of her paintings complement the blue of the bay outside her studio window.

“It gives me pleasure to do what I’m doing,” Winter said. “It just makes me feel free.”