By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
You can’t just look at her cowboy paintings because her horses seem ready to leap off the canvas and gallop alongside you. This quality of her work draws a viewer into the scene and makes him or her pause to consider what has happened in the scene and what is about to happen.
The eyes of her cowboys and cowgirls penetrate viewers, making sure they pay attention to the essence of what it means to be a cowboy or cowgirl.
While she has a passion for painting Black cowboys, artist Sharon Pittman paints men and women from diverse ethnic backgrounds and who all saddle up and ride together.
Pittman was born in San Francisco but has roots in Galveston County. Inside her new home in Texas City, her eyes light up as she reaches into the air and points towards Galveston, the birthplace of her mother.
“My mom and her parents were part of the great Black migration,” Pittman shared. “My dad’s family came to the San Francisco area after World War II.”
Pittman felt she would find a larger audience for her cowboy paintings in Texas rather than the San Fran area. This was a contributing factor to her decision to leave her own birthplace and come to the Texas Gulf Coast.
Growing up in San Francisco, Pittman discovered her calling to be an artist as a little girl. Her father had hung a tarp over a window during home renovations. She spied that fabric and thought to herself she’d like to use it as a canvas.
When her father removed the tarp, she asked his permission to use it and created a self-portrait. That first painting demonstrated her artistic talent to herself and the adults around her.
Though she was good at art, she thought she’d major in writing when she went to college. That is until some of her advisors at college encouraged her to go into art. Since following that advice, she has earned several degrees from California colleges, including a doctorate.
Pittman’s work has been exhibited in California, and for the past two years, her art has been on exhibit in Galveston County.
Her enjoyment in honoring her mother’s roots and returning to Texas along with painting cowboys and cowgirls of many ethnicities aren’t the only reasons she was drawn to the Texas Gulf Coast. She also moved here to live near her adult daughter.
Sharon Pittman will be a featured artist at the upcoming Texas City Art Festival.
