Kit Paulsen was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. She grew up hiking, fishing and exploring; her love of the outdoors and infatuation with drawing began as a youngster. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of Tennessee with a double major in Design and Painting, she landed a job in advertising as an Art Director upon graduation. Marriage and a move to Pittsburgh brought jobs with bigger and better agencies; the most notablewas Ketchum, where Kit worked for many years. Through the grace of her husband’s good salary as a morning disc jockey, she was able to joyfully leave the ad biz and employ the painting part of her degree and was represented by many Pittsburgh galleries. She was delighted to help start a legendary cooperative gallery, “Watercolors”, and was President of their Board of Directors for many years. Kit has 11 commissioned paintings in a stellar restaurant, The Porch at Schenley, in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh (have the goat cheese pizza with fig and arugula – it’s excellent!). Her interest in the outdoors became a passion with the purchase of a 98 acre farm in the Laurel Highlands, just south of Pittsburgh; this was a place of inspiration and endless subjects, many of which can be seen in her work. She illustrated for “Table”, an upscale farm to table foodie magazine, for seven years.

Kit is a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, the Virginia Watercolor Society, and the Fredericksburg Center for Creative Arts. She is represented by LibertyTown Arts Workshop in Fredericksburg, VA, where she and her husband have recently moved. Her illustrations grace the pages of a new poetry and short story book, “Play Onwards”, by Joseph Flara. She is working on a series of paintings all about the beach. Fredericksburg has a plethora of water views waiting to be painted, from youngsters tubing on the rocky Rappahannock to wide open vistas on the Potomac, where the foggy shape in the distance across the water is Maryland. The rosy skin tones against blue water intrigue her, and the layers and layers of sweaty, loudly and minimally dressed beach goers are proving to be beautiful in watercolor.