Lisa Willits
Lisa Willits was an artistic kid: painting, drawing, making greeting cards for her family. In high school, she began studying biology because she loved the great outdoors. With her undergraduate and masters degrees in biology, Willits moved to Charleston, where she enrolled in the MUSC graduate program. However, working in a biomedical research lab each day did not satisfy her love of nature, sunlight and all things outdoors.
Favorite Time
Willits began taking photography classes at the Gibbes Museum School in the mid 1990’s, where she met and studied with artists Jim Darlington and Rhett Thurman. She explored the gamut of mediums before choosing oil painting, which best allowed her to capture vibrant color. Thurman has been a guiding beacon for Willits and, along with friends and family, gave her the encouragement needed to get her work out there. Willits has also studied with Chris Groves, a landscape and still life painter with a gift for light—a natural fit for Willits’ style.
Her lifelong love of the outdoors translates into atmospheric, tonalist landscapes. Favorite Time, depicting a beach pathway at dusk, is a great example of her tonalist style. She likes including things such as telephone poles or watertowers to give her paintings a sense of place. Willits’ work is typically very serene—images that one can happily live with and enjoy every day.
The Spot
One of her favorite challenges is painting while on the boat. The Spot is a scene painted behind Goat Island, a dreamy bit of land between Mount Pleasant and Isle of Palms, which can only be reached by boat. Her thorough knowledge of the local environment allows her to quickly compose reference images on site. “I’m already thinking of how I’m going to mix my paints while I’m still out there,” says Willits.
Back in her studio, Clyde, her adorable yellow Labrador puppy waits patiently for her to create more magical places on her canvases.
words: Stacy Huggins
Watertower 3
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