Nita Engle, one of America's foremost watercolor artists, has painted landscapes from Alaska to her home on the shores of Lake Superior in northern Michigan.  Engle exclusively paints outdoor scenes and paints nothing she has not personally experienced.  She finds endless fascination and challenge in the infinite complexity and mystery of nature.

Engle attended Northern Michigan and Roosevelt Universities and the Art Institute of Chicago.  She was also a professionally trained commercial artist and illustrator, working nine years as art director for a national advertising firm.  Engle feels that she trained herself, however, to paint in watercolors - simply by doing, experimenting and often by breaking the rules.  Her years of experimentation have led her to mixing her own distinctive blend of colors and to finding unusual but useful tools, such as water filled spray bottles.

Engle is an award-winning, long-time member of the American Watercolor Society.  She spends much of her year on the road, conducting workshops, teaching and gathering subject matter.  She exhibits extensively and is represented in collections in the United States and in Great Britain.  Perhaps millions of people have seen her artwork on the covers of such well known magazines as Reader's Digest.  Engle's atmospheric watercolors - her illusions of reality - emerge from her inventive experimentation with her medium.

Nita creates gorgeous landscapes, and her limited edition prints have been published by Mill Pond Press since 1981.  Her art is the subject of the book.  How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself from Watson-Guptill Publications.  She can be seen in the video.  Wilderness Palette: Nita Engle in Michigan.

Named an Art Master by American Artist magazine, Nita was also inducted into the Hall of Fame by U.S. Art magazine and was invited to participate in the 1996 Great Women Artist of America Show.  She writes, "There is so little wilderness left; we are surrounded by pavement.  My goal is to take you into the landscape through my painting.  I want you to actually be there, although briefly - to be as fully engaged and engrossed in the painting as you might be in a book, far away in a different land.  I want to make a space where there is freedom for the mind to wander."