Jerry Stitt: A Nautical Brush

For watercolorist Jerry Stitt, painting is much like golf, a game he plays on occasion. "The person with the fewest strokes wins," he says. This statement underscores the artist's belief that it is important to continually simplify a work until the most basic way to express the idea is found. And like some professional golfers, Stitt hits big off the tee, using a 2" brush to lay down the broad concepts of a painting, a risk/reward that can have big payoffs?or get him off course. But getting off course is one of the things Stitt most enjoys about his style. "I like to get into trouble," he says. "I like to get in spots I have to work myself out of."

Although he paints with remarkable freedom and speed, Stitt is quite methodical about the steps he takes before picking up a brush. He believes deeply that drawing is the foundation of painting and always makes multiple sketches beforehand. At a minimum, these include one vertical and one horizontal to determine composition?and to see which one best fits the idea?as well as a value and color study. When sketching, the artist uses a piece of solid graphite to produce something "really rough." For Stitt, the sketch is the moment when he goes from having an idea to having a plan. "It's a rehearsal for the main event," he says.

In his compositions, Stitt strives to create an informal balance, as opposed to a formal balance, or symmetry. The way he explains this to his students is with the visual of a seesaw. Formal balance, he notes, would have two adults sitting on either end; informal balance would have a child on one end balanced by an adult sitting on the other side, close to the pivot point (or more toward the center). As an extension of his views on composition, Stitt believes that a painting should have clear dominant and subordinate themes, so he tries to establish dichotomies in his work: light and dark, cool and warm, large and small, round and multisided. In My Backyard, for instance, the dominance of the tugboats' horizontal thrust is countered by a few subordinate verticals in the rigging.

Born into a family tied to the sea?his father and many of his uncles worked on tugs in the Seattle area?Stitt has always been fascinated by workboats. He loves the practical characteristics of the tug and the way they mesh with his painting style, which he sees as being quite gestural (if not pragmatic). "I don't paint what an object looks like," he says. "I paint what it's doing." In Off of G Dock much is conveyed through the painting by suggestion. "For all that you see above water, there is at least as much below it," he says. "I wanted to convey the weight of the tug." Every element of the painting?from its composition to its color scheme, to the sense of scale created by the inclusion of a small boat in the foreground?subsequently contributes to that sense of weight.

One of the most important elements of Stitt's life and work is the 60-foot wooden yacht he owns with his brother. White Heron, which the brothers bought in the 1980s, has a long history. Built in 1926, it was used as a pleasure craft before being commandeered by the U.S. Navy during World War II. The Navy used the craft to set steel netting across the Golden Gate Bridge to prevent enemy submarines from entering the San Francisco Bay; today the boat is docked on the same bay in Sausalito, under the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. For a number of years Stitt actually lived on the boat, but now he uses it as a secondary studio. Occasionally he will take his students out on it to sketch on the bay.

Stitt has a demonstration mirror set up in his studio, which allows his students to watch him paint without having to look at his back. Teaching has always been important to the artist, and he emphasizes how much he has learned from his students. There is a piece of cardboard under his easel that says "What would make this painting better, if anything?" A question he frequently asks his students during critiques, it also reminds the artist to continually strive for improvement. Sometimes Stitt gives his students his own work and tells them to make changes. "The world doesn't need another mediocre watercolor painting," he says. "I try to make them realize their work is not that precious. Sometimes I will even tear up one of my own paintings in front of them!"

Stitt always starts with a large brush?at least 2", maybe 3"?and works from the whole to the parts. "That way the parts are already beautiful, described by the large strokes," he says. He tries to create a tension between abstraction (expressed through the large strokes) and representation (created by paying addition to detail), although he tries to limit detail because, as he says, "detail slows down action." Stitt describes the majority of his works as either line-wash or wash-line paintings?depending on the dominance of either one or the other?which typically relates to the level of detail that he has included.

Edges are very important to Stitt, and he explores many different types: rough, lost, and hard. Achieved through a number of techniques, the artist's edges?most of which are quite subtle?usually involve washes or fine brushstrokes. Some of his techniques are less subtle, however, and involve something that he calls the "Stitt Stick," a clay-sculpting tool that he uses to lay in texture. For harder textures, he sometimes uses color straight out of the tube. Both texture techniques can be seen in the lighthouse fenestration in Dundas Island, British Columbia.

Stitt believes in the emotional use of color, which is one of the most notable elements of his style. Part of the emotional aspect of his color choice is the way he makes colors flow together seamlessly to create mood. "Watercolor should look like it's melting," he says. "It's a fluid medium." It is also with color that Stitt is able to create both a sense of narrative and of character. Indeed, it is the means by which the artist conveys the ethos of his pictured subject. Of the tired, worn, yet stalwart tugboat in La Connor, he says, "It's a crusty old workboat with rusty old reds."

Like most watercolorists, Stitt believes that the white of the paper should function as his "white paint." That has not prevented him from doing some experimentation with gesso, however, which he has used straight or in mixes with tube watercolor. "Gesso is a great way to save a painting," he admits. This technique is evident in Gaff Rigger, which displays colors that are far more opaque than traditional transparent watercolor.

Although at casual glance many of Stitt's paintings look similar to one another because of their style and subject matter, the artist works hard to give each one an individual sense of place, focusing on including small details that might only serve as cues to those who are familiar with the scene or location. He also writes down the title of the painting before he executes it, so that he remembers why he painted it. "You can get quite lost in the painting," he concedes.

Stitt has traveled extensively?both to teach and to show his work?and some of his favorite paintings began on the back of airsickness bags. For these pieces, he used a simple set of tray watercolors and vodka, which he requests in sample-size bottles while flying. The vodka dries more quickly than water, he says, making it ideal for travel. Part of his travel has been the result of membership in both the American Watercolor Society and the National Watercolor Society.

Stitt did not start painting until the age of 27. He had been working for the city of Seattle for a number of years when he saw an elderly man effortlessly painting bamboo chutes and leaves on television. He thought to himself, I would like to do that, and soon after he enrolled in art school. Years later, the artist claims "one painting out of 20" to be a success and firmly believes that the key to becoming a better painter comes from getting "a lot of brush mileage." One of Stitt's former teachers, the renowned watercolorist Rex Brandt, used to say that you couldn't call yourself a watercolor painter until you had painted more than 1,000 watercolors. Today Stitt is well over that mark, a testament to many years of hard work?and the fact that he has never spent more than one hour on a painting.