52 Watercolor artist | OCTOBER 2019
WORKING FOR ART
After encouragement from other art teachers throughout
her schooling, Pitts majored in art at the University of
Illinois, Chicago, focusing on painting, photography
and sculpture; she worked her way through art school by
taking temporary offi ce jobs. She was off ered permanent
jobs along the way, but art remained her top priority.
“I remember always being aware of the fact that it would
be an extremely big mistake if I didn’t make sure to keep
the arts part of my life,” she says.
As a student and young artist, Pitts painted primarily in
acrylic. After marrying and having her fi rst child, she read
that the artist Paul Klee worked in watercolor when his
children were young because the medium was more mobile
and fl exible than acrylic or oil. Pitts was familiar with
watercolor from color-study work in college, so the new
mother bought watercolors, paper and brushes and started
playing. “Almost immediately, I remembered how much
I loved the transparent look of watercolor,” Pitts says. “It’s
a very independent-minded medium; it really wants to do
what it wants to do. I love working back and forth between
letting it do what it’s going to do and trying to control it.”
Watercolor has been Pitts’ medium of choice ever since.
She painted fl orals for a while, which allowed her to
explore design and color. Other favorite subjects have
included cowboy boots, Hawaiian shirts and kimonos.
But after suff ering the loss of her younger son when he
was 18, Pitts suddenly wanted to paint trees. “After hedied, I found my art evolving into these tree paintings
without even considering them,” she says. “Th ey just came
to me. Painting them gave me a certain feeling of comfort.”GETTING LOST IN THE PROCESS
Pitts starts many of her paintings en plein air, often at
gardens near her home in New Jersey. “I fi nd fascinating
things all around me,” she says. Just seeing a branch out-
side her window gets her thinking about how she’d draw
and paint it.
After beginning work outside, she brings the painting
back to the studio. “I start adding a little and playing
around with the background, exploring a couple of ideas
from my imagination. Th en I might look at some photos
to see if there are other ideas that I might be able to add,”
she says. Each painting draws inspiration from a combi-
nation of real life, photos, imagination and ideas from
previous paintings. Pitts isn’t interested in making an
exact copy of nature. “I don’t fi nd that interesting, and
I don’t think I’d paint if that were the case,” she says.
Pitts used to rely heavily on an initial drawing, but
she works more loosely now. She only draws if she thinks
she might lose her way in a complex subject, like the nest
paintings she has been painting in recent years. She found
the subject of Nest I, Van Vleck (above) during one of her
local garden sessions. Transfi xed by a nest entangled in a
large branch cut from a tree, she asked permission to take