Paul Pitsker is best known for his watercolors of urban insects poised in melodramatic scenes involving looming disaster. These staged existential mini-dramas are characterized by a mock-elegiac tone and a pervasive dark humor. Inspired by the constant stream of multi-legged visitors flying in and out the open doors of his California studio, he paints his subjects with obsessive precision and genuine admiration. They are depicted, in most cases, as hapless wanderers narrowly avoiding annihilation in a world filled with mortal hazards.

Pitsker remembers drawing compulsively from an early age. During his formative years, his family lived in the middle of a densely forested bird sanctuary in Massachusetts, which provided both endless source material and hours of solitude to feed his artistic obsessions.

He moved to Los Angeles shortly after receiving a mathematics degree from Pomona College in Claremont. Having rediscovered his artistic inclinations during his final months in school, he devoted himself after graduation to independent study with the new goal of becoming a fulltime artist. Now, after many years and many dozens of exhibitions across the country, he is still devoting his obsessive energies to the same formidable task – translating the inscrutable mysteries of life into resonant images.

For more information about him and his art, visit Paul Pitsker's Website.