An Eye for Nature
Former TPWD illustrator sometimes had to catch the wildlife she was painting.
By Karina Kumar
When she was a kid, you could find Nancy McGowan Pruitt on the floor, listening to the radio, doodling on rolls and rolls of used-up seismograph paper — leftovers repurposed from her father's job.
“Paper was precious, and you just didn't squander paper,” Nancy says. With a jagged line on one side telling the story of earthquakes past, she used the paper as a foundation for her burgeoning interest in art. Many of the scenes Nancy sketched were inspired by the camping trips her family took throughout her childhood.
She remembers the stinky, heavy military canvas tent they'd lug around and wondered constantly why they went through all the effort. Over the years, though, she grew to enjoy spending time outdoors and continued to camp later in her life.
After she graduated high school, Nancy started college but wasn't sure it was the right place for her. Luckily, a new art school popped up in the Houston area for commercial art training. Nancy attended and found herself surrounded by other artists, something she'd never experienced before.
During her lunch breaks, she'd go to the Houston Zoo to sketch the animals — a hobby that formed the basis of her career.
In 1960, she was working at the regional department store Foley's as an illustrator. In her free time, she continued drawing animals, sometimes submitting them to the Texas Game and Fish Commission. Still, she was unprepared when a wide-eyed co-worker came to tell her there was a man at the office to see her. It was L.A. Wilke, the editor of Texas Game and Fish magazine, which would go on to become Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine. He asked if she wanted to work for the publication, explaining that her affinity for art and experience with outdoor recreation made her the perfect candidate to become a staff illustrator.
“It was a good direction and the Lord always leads me,” Nancy says.
Working for the magazine encouraged her to spend even more time outdoors. If her new boss wanted a specific fish drawn, she had to go out and catch it herself. Over time, she became friends with game wardens and anglers across the state. When she needed a certain bird or fish that she couldn't find in the Austin area, they would bring it to her at the office. Case in point: When an angler friend found out she needed a live snook, he and his friends drove all night across Texas after catching one, the fish stowed comfortably in a cooler, so she could have it to detail in her artwork.
Although she had to see most animals alive, before they lost their color, she also developed a small collection of deceased animals, which she kept in a freezer for quick reference.
Her game warden friends would even bring her baby animals to raise so she could paint them when they got older. She remembers her pet raccoon and three baby ringtails. She had to go to the office every night to feed the nocturnal creatures.
Accuracy and attention to detail were Nancy's forte. She would count every scale on a fish, identify exactly which feathers were differently colored on birds, and make sure that she only ever depicted animals in environments where they belong.
After 10 years at TPWD, Nancy left the agency but continued her career in wildlife and nature art as a freelancer and created multiple pieces of art focusing on different species.
Although many of Nancy's early art expeditions were solitary affairs, things changed when she met James Pruitt, now her husband of 54 years. “It's very helpful to a starving artist to get married,” Nancy says with a smile. She and Jim went on many adventures, searching for species and observing them in their natural habitats.
“[Jim] had this crazy eye for the road not taken,” she says. “Anytime Jim pointed out a road, we were going to have an adventure.” When they hiked with others, the Pruitts often lagged behind. The others would follow their maps and compasses, rarely looking up to actually see what was going on around them. They'd go far ahead and then stop and ask, “Where are the Pruitts?”
“We were sitting down watching things they'd never see,” Nancy says. “You just sit and be quiet — and there's all the birds.”
In those days, Nancy's head was constantly swirling with ideas of things that she wanted to paint. Over the years, she's made a list of each idea as it crammed its way into her bustling mind. Now that Nancy has become Jim's full-time caretaker at an assisted living facility, she says the ideas aren't swimming around in her head as much as they used to. Nevertheless, she's making her way through the list she's accrued, and their apartment is evidence of her creative mind. She set up her artist's table by her computer desk. Every wall has framed images of animals, mostly birds, that she created, whether by watercolors, pen and ink or colored pencils. Painted wooden animals decorate each door frame: a small raccoon, a bright red cardinal.
On her artist's desk is a handmade stamp of an owl that she carved out of a rubber, eraser-like block. She pulls out file after file of old sketches of feathers, scales and animals. Each painting or drawing brings back memories of where she was, who she was with, and what adventures (and misadventures) they had on that specific trip.
“I can take any picture out of my jumbled files, and it's just like a movie suddenly going off,” she says.
