We recently connected with Chloe Pitkoff and have shared our conversation below.
Chloe, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
When I was 3, my mom and I set off one day to tour a potential pre-school in Brooklyn. The plan was to meet the teachers and explore the space I might be spending time in to see if it would be a good fit. We walked through the tour together and my mom continued to speak with the director while I wandered around. After some time, wondering why I hadn’t returned, they went looking for me.
There I was, having discovered a table-full of red acrylic paint intended for finger-painting. Except instead of delicately dipping a finger in to apply the medium to paper on a nearby easel, I had decided the correct approach was to climb on, face-down, making paint-angels as I swirled myself, and the paint, around the table surface, completely covering my body and brand-new outfit in the wonderfully sticky pigment. I was signed up for the school that day, sent each day with an extra set of clothes, and from then on proclaimed to friends, family, and all other acquaintances that I was an artist.
Several years later, I also decided I wanted to be a children’s book illustrator. I was always surrounded by children’s books (my parents are thrifters and collectors, so I had developed quite an eclectic library at an early age), and years of poring over them brought a fascination of telling stories, making up my own characters and bringing them to life in worlds of their own. The same fascination remains today.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am a fine artist and illustrator born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up in New York City, there were so many wonderful opportunities for kids to engage with art- often for free- and my parents were endlessly supportive of our interests, always finding ways for us to learn more. I took classes at museums, 826NYC, and the Bridgeview School of Fine Arts in Long Island City. Bridgeview’s portfolio classes prepared me to audition for and later attend LaGuardia High School, where courses included sculpture, printmaking, painting, and drawing. In my senior year at LaGuardia, I was commissioned to create the illustrations for “That Baby in the Manger,” by Anne E. Neuberger, one of several books I have illustrated in my career. Outside of children’s books, I am also a muralist and painter, and have built much of my artistic career through portrait commissions, solo and family, always large scale and incorporating colors, patterns, fashions and objects that the subjects request and inspire. Additional commissioned works have included posters and album covers, among others.
After completing a BA in Art (primarily a fine arts-based degree) at Davidson College, I decided to further my studies in illustration, pursuing an MFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology. During my time as a student at FIT, I explored my interest in working in children’s books as both illustrator and author, completing several projects in both roles. I also explored motion graphics and animation, creating shorter GIFs that led to longer, music video-esque animations, and eventually, for my final thesis project, a short animated film, entitled “Flock,” which tells a story of processing grief over a lifetime, based on my friendship with the artist Audrey Flack (1931-2024), for whom I served as Studio Manager until her passing. Until a few weeks ago, the animation was on display in a group exhibition at the Museum at FIT. Since beginning my study of animation, I have also worked on promotional motion graphic design for media groups, as well as animated wall-projections for private, DJ-ed events, a platform well-suited for combining my love of art with that of music.
For nearly as long as I’ve been an artist, I’ve been in various classical and jazz vocal groups, and have always traveled in musical circles: in fact, in many of my art circles I am often “the musician” and vice versa. When I’m not illustrating or sifting through clothing racks at thrift stores across the city (feeding my love of fashion), I work as a Wrangler to the Children’s Chorus at the Metropolitan Opera and Livestream Producer at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Midtown Manhattan, roles that have impacted my artistic subjects and sensibilities immensely. I love to stay busy and can’t imagine my life without this wonderful variety of creative outlets. Throughout my artistic career, I am excited to continue to find ways to overlap my interest in music, film, and fine art/illustration, and am so grateful to all those who have encouraged me along my path so far.
My work is strongly inspired by relationships and connections in my personal life. Often, I will depict members of my family, biological and adopted, using them as a base to evoke more universal, overarching emotions of exuberance, curiosity, disgust, outrage, and silliness. In some pieces, I aim to synthesize my feelings about larger social and political movements and events, in others, I aim to bring a sense of escape to my viewers by venturing into an imaginary world of my own. There is almost always some version of a self-portrait that shows through in my work, whether I am creating a hyper-realistic painting or an animation composed of dot-faced cartoon characters. My hope is that the exaggerated facial expressions, bold color palettes, eccentric fashions and collaged layers of drawing, painting, and everything in between will bring a sense of fun, familiarity, and funk to the minds of all who happen upon my work.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
It is only recently that I have begun to explore digital media. For most of my life, if I was going to consider myself an artist, I wanted to be a “real” artist, working in traditional analog media, mastering classical techniques, interacting with pencil, paint, and paper with my own hand. Up through high school, working digitally felt like cheating to me, as though anyone could click a certain algorithm of buttons and achieve the same solution.
I reached a point very early on in my undergraduate studies at Davidson College where I knew that this mindset was a hindrance to my ability to learn and a flawed outlook to overcome. I was beginning to realize that I was making myself feel stuck in a place where my artistic knowledge and ability were meant to be expanding. I was going to be an artist no matter what, and if I was going to maintain my artistic career, I knew I would have to get up to speed with modern digital tools.
Being a digital artist called for an ever-expanding skill set to keep up with ever-evolving technological developments. So I tried to expand. My first-year work-study job was as Studio Assistant to Davidson’s Digital Arts professor, Joelle Dietrick. I learned as much as I could about digital media while working for Joelle, using what I practiced each day to make posters, album covers, and t-shirt designs for friends’ events on campus, mostly tracing shapes I had drawn out by hand. I began to understand how digital tools could ease speed, perfection of line and color matching, among other things. I wanted to continue challenging my old habits and learn more. I signed up for a class.
We were just beginning to learn how to make 3-frame, simple motion GIFs when COVID shut everything down. I was sent home with my paintings and an Adobe account. In such a tumultuous time, I returned to the familiar, painting my experience of the pandemic as a remote student, moving from a campus studio back to my childhood bedroom. As the pandemic dragged on, the paintings began to feel trapped behind masks and stuck in a rectangle, much as I was. But I wanted to be moving, and I knew I could help them to as well. I began photographing my work, introducing it to Photoshop, and bringing each piece to life in simple ways: with hands wandering across canvases, color morphing, curious shifting eyes. The little bit of motion brought light and humor to the pieces that had just been waiting to burst out.
By the time I went to FIT, I was no master of Photoshop, but I did know how to move a cut piece of painting across a screen. Though I still had trouble with some of the tools in my new MFA Digital Arts class, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to create more motion, even attempting to draw all the shapes out digitally on occasion. These smaller GIFS combined and grew longer with each new project. And finally, for my thesis project: a 15-minute-long short film, composed of hand-drawn frames brought to life with Adobe Premiere, After Effects, and Photoshop. My work on this project has led to so many wonderful animation-based business opportunities in ways I never could have imagined a few years ago. I’ve loved what I’ve had the opportunity to create so far, and I can’t wait for what’s next, especially what I’ll have to learn along the way to get there, knowing I can always return to my foundation to begin.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
It’s seeing faces light up when talking about favorite children’s books, hearing which books people grew up with, which ones they’ve chosen to hold on to. I love knowing that I’m making some small contribution to that world, one where people feel safe, explorative, and happy. I’ve found that once people discover I’m a children’s illustrator and hear about the themes I enjoy focusing on, they initially share about related uplifting moments in their life, but quickly open up and enter into more deeply emotional conversations.
In portraiture, I love being able to tell the story of a group of people through a single image, incorporating beloved ice cream brands, family history and traditional patterns, moments of intimate interaction that display a clear sense of love between subjects and life well shared. The interviews I conduct before beginning each painting always bring out stories that I might not have learned otherwise. In animation, I love bringing these stories to motion.
I’ve also loved the community I’ve discovered and been welcomed into as an artist and illustrator. I’ve been lucky to work alongside so many talented, kind, encouraging individuals, and am always inspired by how they support each other. It’s a wonderful feeling to be uplifted by your peers, and I’m always excited when I’m able to connect them with opportunities as well.
Perhaps my favorite aspects of being an artist is knowing that anything is possible. Artists can create something from nothing, transform society, and bring hope to the world. It is a tremendous responsibility and challenge, but also an honor and a privilege. I love being trusted with this task, and try never to take it for granted.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://chloepitkoff.com
- Instagram: @chloe_pitkoff_art_
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloe-pitkoff-7961601ab/
Image Credits
Personal Photo taken by Alexander Pattavina.