NitA

Click Here to Contact This Artist Directly

This page is part of VisionaryArt.com's "Buy Direct" service. This artist's work has been deemed to have merit by VisionaryArt.com and their work is being presented here as a service to our clients. All negotiations and correspondence are between the client and the artist. 

Representative Works with Artist's comments in Italics. You may click on the pieces or the titles to contact the artist on our secure server.

Picking Cotton Acid Free Artist Paper 16 " X 20" $175.00 Shipping $12.00	Mermaids on the Beach  Paint on Wood Ready to Hang 17" X 27" $250.00 Shipping $20
Mammy with a Melon Acrylics on Canvas 12 1/2" X 15 1/2" Framed, Ready to Hang $132.00 Shipping $12.00	Chicken Cart Paint on Wood 5" X 12" $75.00 Shipping $12.00
Mean Chicken Acrylics on French Art Paper  12" X 15" $112.00  Shipping $10.00	Moses  Paint on Wood Ready to Hang 12" X 16"  $150.00 Free Shipping
Teen Angel Acrylics on Wood Ready to Hang 10" X 12" $150.00 Free Shipping!	Two Women with Dog Having Coffee  Acrylics on Grocery Bag 11" X 15" $99.00 Shipping $10.00

We are very proud to offer work by the extremely talented  Joan Bunge. As you can tell by the work offered here, Joan,  a.k.a. NitA is a very gifted Self-Taught artist that has work in many important collections in the U.S. and abroad. Her work has been shown at several self-taught galleries throughout the U.S. 

Nita in her own words...

My name is Joan Bunge. I'm a self taught folk artist. I sign my pieces "NitA". I was born (1950) in Macon, Georgia but lived and worked in Milledgeville with the Department of Corrections for about 20 years. I live in Rutledge, Georgia now, about 50 miles east of Atlanta. I'm happily married and have children and grandkids too. I'm a insulin dependent diabetic and have lost about half my site in my left eye from diabetes. 

I've been painting folk art about 12 years. I paint all the time, if I'm not painting, I'm thinking about painting. I paint on wooden boards (big and small) and grocery bags mostly. But I also paint on cardboard, bottles, over old canvas paintings, tin off old roofs, old wooden pelt stretchers, windows, screens from windows, old doors and on furniture too. I'm sure I forgot something there! Just about anything that sits still long enough, I paint it. I have many styles too...When I sit down to paint, I never know what's gonna happen, I just put color down and see where it takes me.

I have painted a series of prison art, from my years of working there. But I also paint strange animals, peoples faces all lined up, cotton fields, black folks that I love, lots of outer space or twilight zone stuff, chickens, roosters, Mammies, Mammies chasing roosters...and on and on...... I like to use weird stuff in my paintings, like stamps, cut up credit cards and watermelon seeds, anything with color or texture. It still amazes me that people buy my stuff, but I've sold it all over the world now. 
I also have greeting cards, that I make from my works. I can do a consignment piece for you, just email me and let me know what you want. My work has been in several galleries, magazines and newspapers. I also make wind chimes, have vegetable gardens, love to cook and eat and I raise fish. I have about 8 fish tanks right now. My husband and I paint and fix old houses, so I use a lot of scraps and paint from our jobs.

Thank you, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Joan Bunge, AKA NitA

Excerpts from an article by Angelina Bellebuono in Lake Oconee Living Magazine that featured NitA... 

DAY ONE... I awaken to blue skies, but when I visit NitA's studio in Rutledge, she shows me that in her painted worlds, pigs perform glorious arabesques on a simple paper sack. "I feel freer to create when I paint on what I have," she explains. NitA, also known as Joan Bunge, has been painting for the past eight years, after working more than 20 years as a dental assistant with the state prison system. She has no art training; she paints because she must. "I had always been artistic, but I had never found my medium," she says. "Until this." She looks around her studio and the gallery, an old building in this small, artsy hamlet in Morgan County, and motions to her widely varied works, hanging above doorways, stacked neatly on wooden tables, decorating ironing boards and window frames. NitA's creative energy is palpable here, yet she seems completely unaware of the power behind her vivid use of color, clever subject matter and the observations like respect each life, be quiet, listen that she incorporates into her art. 

She smiles, as do many of the faces that are represented in her work. Faces of women, children, and men. All races of people peer from NitA's paper sack canvases, perhaps because she peered at so many people for so many years. "My patients were in the worst possible places when they came to me.. .in prison and in the dentist's chair. 1 had to have a sense of humor." No wonder admirers of her art call her pieces funky and fun. Rosie Becker's daughter, Aimee Gilbert, raved to her mother about NitA's work, and now Becker has pieces in her 1850s Madison home and her beach house. "I like NitA's work because it is fun art," Becker says, "And it's real." Her favorite piece is one that NitA creates in various forms. A woman looks directly out from the painting, and a chicken sits on a nest atop the woman's head. Eggs spill out from the nest, tumbling over the woman's shoulders. The painted words explain, "I have to simplify my life." Becker says, "The woman has red hair; she looks like me, and I love it."

Click Here to Contact This Artist Directly