The Artist
Mitch Hurst grew up amid the rich tropical flora and fauna between Jupiter and Key West, Florida. He spent countless days fishing, water skiing, and camping along the Intracoastal Waterway, inlets and ocean shores living a barefoot, Huckleberry Finn childhood. He developed a passion for the raw beauty of the tropics and for sketching his experiences in nature.
After graduating from college in 1981, Mitch bought a camera and focused on photography for a number of years before he transitioned into computer animation. After retiring from a career in the Seattle technology industry in 2017, he returned to the visual arts, advancing his drawing skills by adding watercolor washes to inked in landscapes.
In 2018, Mitch signed up for a pastel painting workshop in Croatia taught by Steve Hill and quickly marveled at the flexibility and painting efficiency of the pastel medium. He reflects, “pastel paints provide a means to recreate not just the rich colors and wide-ranging values of nature, but also the complex textures of flora, land, sky and sea. Pastel papers have “teeth” which allow the artist to create multi-colored layers with 3D depth. Pastels are also a powerful medium for creating bright impressionistic paintings where neighboring saturated colors generate the needed contrast within a composition. Landscape painting provides a fantastic means for falling into the plein air moment. It allows one to focus on observing the natural world and then finessing your materials to strive to recreate the essence of the things that move you.”
In 2022, Mitch moved to the Big Island of Hawaii with his wife Kristen and cat Gino. Their goal is to soak in the delightful Hawaiian lifestyle and enjoy every day.