Artist Background
Alita Van Vliet is an award winning artist and designer with home and studio in the beautiful coastal mountains of Santa Cruz County, California. Living all of her life on the West Coast she was born in San Francisco, and grew up on the peninsula in Palo Alto. Her art influence began as a young child growing up surrounded by art and artists. Her mother was a teacher who encouraged her with plenty of paper, pencils and paint. Her father, an Architect with offices in Stanford was also a talented artist himself, teaching pottery classes for Palo Alto's Adult Education. Barely able to reach the potter's wheel pedal, Alita was often found tagging along at his classes or his office where she found an immediate connection with the people and the environment. She dabbled in textile art, studying in the late 60's, while still in grade school under a well known San Francisco Bay Area fabric artist and family friend, Kay Lee Bunn. She was very active in the art department during her high school years, enjoyed making jewelry, working in pen and ink and clay. She began showing her artwork in solo shows at the age of 17, featuring her pen and ink illustrations. Her college studies in the 70's and 80's include degrees in both Fashion Design and Landscape Design. While working as a professional Landscape Designer since 1984, she continued with her art and began to focus more on her painting skills taking classes at the local community college, and studied in France one summer. Her art and her design work over the last 20 years has fueled her passion of creating beauty through art with inspiration from nature. Her colorful and expressive paintings and her artfully planned garden designs truly reflect these passions.
Alita is currently a member of the Santa Cruz Art League and the Corralitos
Artist Collective, and a participant in the Annual Santa Cruz County Open
Studios Tour. She regularly shows her work throughout the state in local
venues, festivals, galleries and cafes.
See Show Calendar
Artist Medium and TechniqueShe most enjoys working with acrylic paints which she
feels allows her to move quickly and with a more spontaneous
expression. Her love of nature and botanical knowledge is evident in her art work and her collection of floral and landscape paintings feature a strong color palette
and a real focus on line, shape and background. In her process of
layering both opaque and transparent color her paintings are rich with
texture, luminosity and depth. Alita's paintings are
available in small and large formats and are often seen in diptych and
triptych formats, where the subject is divided between multiple
canvases. “ I really enjoy working in this way as it naturally
encourages me to loosen up as I move from canvas to canvas”. She enjoys pushing the boundry of the canvas and many of her pieces are done with painted frames where the subject playfully wraps over and onto the sides. She finds inspiration for her artwork in her local surroundings and has traveled on several occasions to such places as Hawaii, France and the Southern California Desert to paint.
Color Layering Technique Floral Collection Landscape Collection Desert Collection
She can be reached at:
Phone: 831-332-0984
Email: alita@alitavanvlietart.com