Artist Focus

Artist Focus: Nita Harper

Although Nita Harper has lived all over the country, the Southern California desert is now home to this award-winning artist. As the granddaughter of a professional artist who showed his work alongside painters like Edgar Payne, Victor Higgins and Walter Ufer, Harper was inspired at an early age and has now been painting for most of her life.

Tehachapi Arts Commission, King of the Mountain, oil, 18 x 24 in., by Nita Harper.

Harper studied art with an emphasis on painting at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, the University of Arizona and the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has also studied with noted artists Albert Handel, Frank Serrano, Camille Przewodek and the late Ann Templeton.

Tehachapi Arts Commission, Oak Bones, oil, 18 x 24 in., by Nita Harper.

Over the years, moves from Illinois to Florida, Texas and finally to California have exposed Harper to a variety of landscapes. Drawn to the vast landscapes of the Southwest, Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley and Grand Canyon are among her favorite places to visit and paint.

Among other affiliations, Harper is a member of the PAC6, a group of six women artists committed to painting adventures following in the footsteps of those early painters who traveled the West over a century ago. For Harper, a painting trip on horseback into the Eastern Sierras was the trip of a lifetime.