Inspiring Interiors: Kitty Harvill Channels Family for Flying High Signature Watercolor

BY BECKY WOOD, MANAGING EDITOR

As Kitty Harvill and her husband Christoph renovate their new home in Clarksville, inspiration blooms from the 19th century walls. Scraping past multiple layers of old wallpaper, shapes appear among the plaster and glue – an eagle perched over the fireplace, monkeys atop a doorframe, flora abounds. As an award-winning artist and illustrator, Kitty has experienced a lifetime of finding inspiration in unexpected places.

Each year, the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center chooses a single artist to craft a signature work of art for Flying High, their largest annual fundraiser. As the Signature Artist for Flying High 2022, Kitty Harvill found inward inspiration in more ways than one. After years of splitting her time between Arkansas and Brazil, her recent move back to Clarksville marks a return to a community rich with family history.

The Harvill name should be familiar to most Clarksvillians. Kitty’s grandfather, Halbert Harvill, served as the president of Austin Peay State College from 1946 to 1962 and was responsible for much of the school’s early growth. Her parents, Evans and Peg Harvill, were lifelong art and community advocates, and Peg was an accomplished artist herself. She was the Flying High Signature Artist a dozen times, including for the gala’s first ten years, where she painted a series of watercolors of the 1898 U.S. Post Office and Customs House building.

Kitty Harvill in her home studio.

Interior of Customs House Building Photographer unknown, circa 1980s

Archives Collection, Customs House Museum & Cultural Center

As Kitty was contemplating and developing her vision for this signature piece, she realized that while there were many distinctive depictions of the Customs House building, there were no paintings of the interior of the Museum. She met with Museum staff to review photographs in the archives, where a particular image of the old Postmaster’s office caught her eye. “I was completely captivated by a black-and-white interior photo,” she said. “The play of light, the sense of intimacy... I simply couldn’t let it go.” When her ideas began to come together, she thought about the juxtaposition of interiors and exteriors on a deeper level.

“My mother painted the exterior of the Museum so many times, and so many people knew her and her contributions from the outside. But I knew her from the inside,” Kittyexplained. “She was very much a disciplinarian when I was growing up, but when I went off to school and was studying art, our whole relationship moved into this era of colleagues and art friends.”

Kitty left Clarksville after high school, ultimately racking up various art degrees from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, University of Illinois at Chicago and Ray College of Design. Despite the distance, she was in constant contact with her mother. “Anything really good that happened, anything really terrible that happened – my first impulse was to pick up the phone and call Mom,” she said. “I knew every piece she was working on, she knew everything that I was working on... we’d share discoveries, tips, critiques.”

The two began their art careers at the same time. “When I went off to college and majored in art, she went back to Austin Peay and started taking art classes,” said Kitty of her mother, who quickly found a passion for the subject. “She stopped gardening, she stopped sewing, they started going out to eat, because she was just all in on her art. She was doing all these different artistic things, but she fell in love with watercolor.”

Kitty started as an oil painting major, but was living in a small space that was not conducive to the fumes and turpentine. On a visit to Clarksville after graduating, she and Peg attended a watercolor class at Austin Peay taught by Max Hochstetler, and she was hooked. Watercolor became her main working medium, until she moved to Brazil where the tropical humidity is so high that works on paper are not in very high demand. She started working in oil and open acrylics, but has always been drawn to the element of surprise that comes with watercolor. She knew this was the best medium to capture the light and transparency of her signature piece, in which she aimed to incorporate her mother both spiritually and literally.

With that original black-and-white photograph as her foundation, Kitty planned to set a scene of a family visiting the Postmaster in the 1930s – complete with young Peggy, an eight-year-old girl with her hobby horse, a nod to the fundraiser’s horseracing venue in Oak Grove. She used a photograph of her mother from 1938 and staged a photoshoot with staff and friends of the Museum in Heritage Hall, which was still functioning as a post office until 1939. Starting with a sketch on a full sheet of watercolor paper, she used a careful combination of primary colors to form the soft grays of the iconic windows. Building from there, the final result is Peg’s Pony, a work of art that honors Peg Harvill and the history of the Customs House in a remarkable way.

Untitled Peg Harvill, 1984 Flying High Signature Watercolor

Untitled Peg Harvill, 1989 Flying High Signature Watercolor

Untitled Peg Harvill, 1991 Flying High Signature Watercolor

Kitty is known best for her nature and wildlife art, as well as her personal dedication to aiding the conservation of endangered species and their respective habitats. Along with her husband, she founded Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN), a collection of nature and wildlife artists serving the conservation community with original images for use in promoting awareness. She is a signature member of Artists for Conservation (AFC) and The Wildlife Art Society International (TWASI), and her work is included in collections across the United States, Brazil, Germany and Singapore. This year, Kitty will receive the 2022 Simon Combes Conservation Award, which is the most prestigious award and highest honor that AFC presents to acknowledge artistic excellence and extraordinary contributions to the conservation cause.

Kitty Harvill did not anticipate a move back to her hometown after all these years, but a visit to town in 2021 to attend her father’s funeral brought about a sense of community and kindness that could not be ignored. “Christoph looked at me as we were headed back to Arkansas, and he said ‘Why are we moving back to Little Rock? Why aren't we moving to Clarksville?’” Three days later, Kitty found the house – a slice of Clarksville history on Greenwood Avenue, built in the 1850s. She looks forward to reconnecting with the city once again as she fills her new home with custom murals and continues her family legacy of art and advocacy.

Peg’s Pony will be auctioned off at the 38th annual Flying High fundraiser on July 16, with all proceeds going towards the Museum and its mission.

Peg’s Pony Kitty Harvill, 2022 Flying High Signature Watercolor

PEG’S PONY DEDICATION By Kitty Harvill

As a child, I was convinced that my mother, Peg Harvill, could do anything.

I’m still convinced of that today.She didn’t just sew... she tailored.

She didn’t just cook... she tackled elaborate recipes and hosted wonderful dinner parties.

She didn’t just garden... she had a greenhouse and a row of irises, from palest cream to darkest ebony, that people would make Sunday afternoon drives to see.

And, when she began painting, she didn’t just delight our family and those who bought her work. She gave generously, donating her paintings to various worthy causes.

As I looked through previous pieces created for Flying High, I realized that there were no paintings of the interior of the Museum. Then I thought, so many people had an exterior view of my mother and her many talents and community service... but I knew her interior. I don’t think anyone knew my mother quite as well as I did. She was a very private person in many ways, and I was her best friend. She shared her hopes, her dreams, her pain and her secrets with me.

How appropriate, then, to paint the interior of the Museum and dedicate it to the “interior” of the woman that I knew and loved, the woman who could do anything... and did.

Through her wildlife art, Kitty aims to raise awareness about conservation efforts around the world.