Paulina Jones Everitt

Paulina Jones Everitt was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1905, and lived in Independence, Missouri. After graduating from University of Missouri in Columbia, Everitt studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she studied with Charles Bunnell, and at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts. There she studied art with Gustave Goetsch and later in New York with William Merritt Chase. After finishing her studies, she taught in the Kansas City Public Schools for two years. In 1930, she married architect R. Stanton Everitt.

Everitt was involved in organizing the Kansas City Art Institute Alumni Drawing class, which she joined in the 1960s. She painted in oil and watercolor and designed jewelry. She first began showing her work in the 1930s at the Kansas City Art Institute and in group and solo exhibitions in Kansas City.

Everitt quickly gained recognition for her unique style and was invited to exhibit at major venues, including the New York's World Fair, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Joslyn Museum of Art in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1950, she was chairman of the Mid-America Annual Exhibition.

In the 1950s Everitt developed an interest in sculpture, after viewing an exhibition of Greek Tanagra sculptures at the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and the Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts. Her sculptures were made from clay and bronze. Equipped with a small backyard studio and a kiln, Everitt learned ceramic processes by trial and error to create terracotta figurines that she exhibited later in her career.

Paulina Everitt died on February 9, 1996, in Independence, Missouri.