Ocracoke artist Kitty Mitchell has been gripped this summer with what she calls “insane creativity.”
 
“I can’t step out my door without seeing a hundred beautiful things, and I’m in a feverish frenzy to paint them all.”
 
Mitchell is Ocracoke School’s art and Spanish teacher, and she runs the after-school music club. She’s also one-third of the band Molasses Creek, along with her husband, Gary Mitchell, and Fiddlin’ Dave Tweedie. They play two nights a week at Deepwater Theater during the summer season, and travel off-island to perform dozens of times a year. If all that didn’t keep her busy enough, she’s also a mom and a competitive athlete.
 
Creating the time to create art took a conscious decision on Mitchell’s part this summer.
 
“I’ve been collecting images for years,” she says, “Some are photos I’ve taken or pictures from magazines – anything that strikes me as visually fascinating – and I’ve been thinking about painting, and storing up all these ideas.”
 
Now she’s acting on all this stored up creativity and covering the walls of Deepwater Theater with paintings of birds and fish and the moonlit sea.
 
“What pushed me over the edge was re-watching a video called ‘Maestro.’ Its message is that the noun “painting” is not what counts in art. It’s the verb “painting” that matters – doing it makes it happen.”
 
It’s a message that Mitchell plans to share with her Ocracoke students.
 
“Whatever it is you want to be, you’ve got to be doing it. Creating, writing, building, playing music, you’ve just got to start,” she advises.
 
Mitchell didn’t always know she wanted to be an artist. Growing up in Pittsburgh, she thought she’d like to be a lawyer like her grandfather and even started in a pre-law program at the University of Pittsburgh. That didn’t last long, and she graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in studio arts. Before the ink was dry on her last exam, she was on the bus to Ocracoke. (Back in the mid-‘70s you could take a bus to Manteo and then catch the mail truck to Ocracoke.)

  
Mitchell can’t remember her first trip to Ocracoke (she was 2 years old), but on her second trip at age 12, she knew she’d found home.
 
“I decided to live here when I first got off the ferry,” she says.
 
Mitchell used her artist skills on Ocracoke painting signs, some of which, like the Pelican Restaurant sign, are still hanging. She also designed the placemat for the Pony Island restaurant, making her galloping ponies the most reproduced artwork on Ocracoke. Mitchell owned a studio/gallery in what is now the hardware store – she’s says she did a lot of art, but wasn’t so smart at business, preferring to close on good beach days.
 
She married Gary Mitchell in 1983.  They moved to Greensboro, where Mitchell worked as a newspaper illustrator and freelance artist, had her daughter Katy, and started teaching. The Mitchells moved back to the island in 1991 because of the job opening at Ocracoke School. Mitchell teaches art to all grades – from pre-K to high school – and loves her job.
 
“I can’t do as much art during the school year,” she says. “My creative energy is spent on teaching, but now I come over here in the morning with a thermos of coffee and some peanuts and I paint until dinner time.”
 
“Here” is Mitchell’s studio, a former woodshop next to the old Rondthaler house. The Rondthalers’ daughter, Katherine Woodwell, rents the building to artists or craftsmen. 
 
“She wants it to be an active place for someone to use, to give something to the community,” says Mitchell, who’s grateful for the space.
 
The studio is full of art books, and all the tools of the trade: paint, brushes, pens, pencils, canvases, and easels. Mitchell likes to keep three or four paintings going at a time, so there’s always something to work on while one painting is drying. She’s been working in acrylic paints this summer, adding varnish to give the finished work a “wet look” – which perfectly enhances her underwater scenes, both realistic (fish) and fantastic (mermaids).
Other paintings depict familiar sights on Ocracoke: wading birds, flying gulls, boats, ponies, cats, chickens, or the full moon. All of them show Mitchell’s love for Ocracoke, and her commitment to “just do it” this summer and become the verb “painting.”
 
 
Mitchell hangs her paintings at Deepwater Theater on School Road, and will be showing her work at Down Creek Gallery. Prints of many of her recent paintings should be available by Christmas.