Up All Night : Cover Artist Connie Kittok

by Jamey Landry

“Fast and loose!” our cover artist Connie Kittok blurted out with a sly giggle. She then quickly emphasized with a chuckle that “fast and loose” was her painting style and not her lifestyle, but with perhaps a faint bit of remorse in her voice.

“I hate the thought of waking up to an unfinished piece,” she explains. In a kind of dual personality role, Connie works by day as a designer in the marketing department of a regional real estate firm. But by night, she is infused with the spirits of the great masters such as Van Gogh, Degas and others. “I paint at night when everyone else is sleeping, sometimes late into the next morning.” The basis for her fast and loose painting style is the combination of her desire for creative expression with the limited time available and her excitement to see how her work turns out.

Every painting begins with an idea of what it will be, but Connie says she is not afraid of what it may become. As do all gifted artists, she listens to what the canvas tells her it needs to make the painting better. She says she observes the painting as she works, looking for opportunities to experiment and improve it as it takes on life of its own. More often than not, the results are satisfying, but can also be improved after a “rest period.”

“I often go back the next day to the piece I worked on all night and put finishing touches to it.” Sometimes, however, Connie admits that what seemed like a great idea during a sleep-deprived all- nighter of painting produces some unexpected results. “I sometimes look at those in a new light the next day and wonder ‘what was I thinking?’”

By Connie’s own recollections, she seems to have been “drawn” to be an artist. “I just had this inner feeling all my life that I was meant to do this. It’s all I ever wanted to do but, I was not sure if I could make a living at it.” As a small child, she recalls making tiny Mardi Gras floats out of bars of soap and other odd things for school projects. Often, in moments of “haute couture,” she would cut up her brothers’ shirts to create new fashions to dazzle her “public.” “Art just came naturally to me,” she says.

Later in life, when she was just starting out as a graphic designer, her résumé portfolio consisted of examples of past projects, ads and all the other staples of the graphic design trade. She also included a few personal fine art pieces. After looking at those pieces, interviewers obviously impressed with the quality of the fine art pieces invariably asked why she didn’t just paint for a living. “The thought never occurred to me to try and make a steady living at it [painting fine art], not when your family expects a steady paycheck,” Connie says, reflecting back on those experiences. But her time would come.

Connie has worked for about 30 years as a graphic designer. Out of high school, she spent 16 years as a graphic designer and medical illustrator with a New Orleans-area hospital. When that hospital began downsizing, an opportunity opened as a staff designer at a Mardi Gras-throw-cup supplier and provided another creative outlet. After five years, that company also scaled back, and Connie moved on to her present job with the real estate firm. Throughout her professional career, she continued to paint and pursue other creative outlets. Designing throw cups encouraged her to open a screen printing business, but with mixed results.

“I bought a screen printing press and hired two men from out of state to train me,” she recalls. They showed Connie how to set up and run the press, and coached her on what it took to run a successful, albeit a part-time, screen business. Eventually, the struggle of balancing a full time job, family and a surprisingly demanding part-time business took its toll. Connie sold the press after a little more than a year. She now focuses on balancing her desire to paint with developing marketable art pieces.

Not surprisingly, her work in general as a graphic artist and with the real estate firm in particular seems to have provided her with the ability to sense market trends in art. Though creating the art is first and foremost in her heart, she admits that sales are an artist’s goal. “My walls are full enough of my work. I want someone else to have them!” The increasing demand for her paintings follows her choices for subject matter. Connie’s favorite subjects are often familiar New Orleans scenes, done as a fond remembrance of what has been lost since Katrina. “I feel I have to express myself through my art, so I do so while painting scenes and memories from my beloved town. I will always call New Orleans home. All the jazz and the people—that’s what makes the city what it is.”

Referring to her current work, Connie says she enjoys the opportunity to do commission work for interior designers. She is especially fond of working with the designer’s color palettes for a particular space, because that helps her create pieces that are truly individualized and unique to the space. “It becomes more a part of the room,” she insists.

Naturally, her themes for commission work vary with the client, but one piece in particular that challenged Connie was a landscape of the Louisiana State University football stadium. An abstract with surprising realism and instantly recognizable to any true LSU fan, it is one of her most popular paintings, particularly after the Fighting Tigers championship 2007-8 season.

Even though Connie is currently showing in many local galleries in Louisiana and one in Alabama, perhaps her best agent is her husband, Michael. A contractor, he carries a small portfolio of Connie’s work with him, just in case he sees an opportunity to connect Connie and her art with his clients who are looking for something unique and personal. Her teenage children, Austin and Katherine, also participate in their mom’s fine art career, offering critiques of her work that Connie finds grounding. “They are among the most critical of all my critics,” Connie lovingly says of their critiques.

Working at night while her family sleeps has another advantage, too. Just as her brothers’ shirts provided the raw materials for her fashions, Michael is also Connie’s chief supplier for her picture frames, often the result of her midnight raids. “I’ll work on a new piece and need to make a frame for it, and, being a contractor, he always has pieces of wood available. He gripes sometimes about ‘stealing his customer’s wood’, but he always has the perfect pieces for my paintings!” Connie giggles.

Connie will be a featured local artist at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival April 25-27.

See more of her work by visiting www.ckittokart.com. She is available for commission work and can be contacted at 985-386-4570 or through her website. Her paintings are available locally at Louisiana Furniture & Art Gallery, Ponchatoula; FrameUp, Laplace; Agora, New Orleans; and at Currier Antiques and Art in Orange Beach, Ala.