Santa Monica, Ca. Paul Pitsker specializes in watercolor paintings characterized by a shallow-focus worldview, a mock-elegiac tone, and ever-present dark humor. He creates fictional scenes of impending annihilation, desktop existential dramas involving local urban insects and birds, which he paints with minute precision, clarity, and sympathy. He remembers drawing constantly as a child but did not seriously consider art as a career until after getting a mathematics degree from Pomona College in Claremont. Inspired by a single art class at the very end of his studies, he ultimately decided to drop all other plans and become an artist. Since then, he has exhibited his work in dozens of venues across the U.S., though he shows most frequently in and around Los Angeles. Studio visit and interview with Paul.