Pahrump resident and artist Bernie Pitts’ artwork touches lives.

There is a world of beauty to be found in the face, from the joyful innocence of an infant to the age-old wisdom written in the lines and creases of a person who has seen many years, and for local artist Bernie Pitts, they all hold a unique draw.

A fascination born in her childhood, her love of the human face and its incredible rainbow of structures, features, and expressions has buoyed not only her own artistic endeavors but the spirits of those who have been lucky enough to have been able to have someone they love etched in time with Pitts’ incredible work.

Close family, friends, her fellow Red Hatters and more, have all had the chance to have Pitts create a masterpiece especially for them and one, Maggie George, was so touched by this artist’s talent that she reached out to the Pahrump Valley Times to highlight Pitts’ story.

“Bernie’s portrait of my husband has changed my life,” George explained, noting that her husband had passed just one year prior. “It’s one of him smiling and laughing and every day I look at that, it’s like it brings him back to life. It just warms my soul, so she made such a big impact on me. What a legacy.”

Meeting with the Times last month, the 95-year-old Pitts was dressed to the nines, with a perfectly coordinated black and white ensemble, right down to the accessories. “I have always loved fashion,” Pitts explained as she displayed one of her early artworks, a sketch of a woman in a fur coat and dress that, even decades later, easily evokes the elegance of the 1940s.

Pitts said her talent with capturing likenesses is something she was simply born with and she has always loved to bring paper to life with her images. “I guess I’ve always known how to draw,” she remarked. “I was in grade school, it was during the war [World War II] and I would always draw pictures of ladies’ faces from the WACs and the WAVEs, you know, female military. It was just something that I did all the time, it was something that came natural to me. At 11, I was drawing the faces of movies stars, like Alice Faye and Betty Grable. They weren’t terrific but they showed I was relatively good at it.”

Pitts’ talent was such that she ended up transferring to Cass Tech in her home state of Michigan during high school, to deepen and broaden her artistic abilities.

“The high school I went to was known for its art curriculum and what they taught me was how to use pen and ink, charcoal, pencil, colored oil paints, all the different mediums, but I was already drawing faces,” Pitts explained.

Her skills extend far beyond just faces, however, with clothing, animals, flowers and many other subjects coming through her fingers, too. But for her, the beauty of personal identity found in the little details of an individual face will always be the biggest attraction.

Despite having such a way with creating beauty from nothing, Pitts never did pursue art as a career. Instead, she spent her entire adult life, right up until her retirement at age 82, working as a waitress. But art has always been a part of her life and always will be.

Her best advice to budding artists? Turn your subject upside down and you’ll see it in a whole new light. The proportions that you’re used to viewing from one angle come in completely different when viewing them in the opposite way. It’s advice that artists can use, certainly, and perhaps everyone else as well. If you’re having trouble understanding something, maybe you should turn it upside down and try to view it from another perspective.

Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com