Baldwin Township artist helps launch Vintage Grand Prix with painting of Paul Skenes – TribLIVE

Todays toast of Pittsburgh sports is about to be immortalized in art.

Paul Skenes, the rookie who is the first Pirates pitcher in 49 years to start a Major League Baseball All-Star Game, will be the subject of a live acrylic painting by Baldwin Township artist Kait Schoeb at a July 26 prelude to the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix.

Her work during the Black Tie & Tailpipes Gala at Downtowns PPG Wintergarden is based on a photo of Skenes, who will be with his team in Arizona that evening. After its completion, the portrait will be put up for auction to benefit Grand Prix charity partners.

Originally, I was just going to do the skyline, because we wanted to have something broad to appeal to everybody, Schoeb said about the oft-captured Pittsburgh panorama.

But with Skenes performing historically significant feats on the mound for the Pirates, the gala organizing committee decided hed be an eminently suitable subject.

Then when I saw he got the All-Star game, I was like, sweet! the artist said. And then when I saw that they had him starting, I was like, oh, this is perfect. This is perfect.

As a full-time artist with her a business called Paints By Kait, Schoeb has produced portraits of plenty of prominent Pittsburgh athletes, including Sidney Crosby, Troy Polamalu, Andrew McCutchen, Hines Ward and Jaromir Jagr.

Painting people is definitely my favorite subject, and I really love realism and painting in oils, so thats kind of my bread and butter, she said.

She uses acrylics for live paintings because they allow her to finish a painting much more quickly than her preferred medium.

One of her early works in oil is of a bus driver named Kletus. Her Baldwin High School art teacher, Jane Riccardi, suggested that a photo of him would make for a good project for Schoeb to work on between 11th and 12th grades.

I didnt want to paint over my summer. Thats the last thing you want to do when youre 17 years old, she admitted. I wound up doing it, but the whole time I didnt have my teacher behind me saying, Change this. Do this. So I didnt know how people were going to react to it.

It wasnt until I came in my first day of senior year that Mrs. Riccardi almost fell off her chair.

With the portrait making such a positive impression on the teacher, She entered me into everything that she possibly could, and I wound up either winning first place or taking the entire show and getting best in show, Schoeb recalled. So thats when it hit me that I was like, oh. Im really good at this. But it still wasnt something that I thought could be a career path.

Further encouragement and recommendations came from pastel artist Linda Barnicott, best known for her paintings of Pittsburgh landmarks, including this years The Place for Smiles to help celebrate the 75th anniversary of Eatn Park.

Linda was the first person I saw who was doing artwork as an actual career and succeeding at it, Schoeb said. Ive met A-list celebrities, and thats fine. But meeting Linda, I was shaking in my boots, because Im such a huge fan of hers.

Schoeb relocated to Seattle for a while, but she returned to her hometown because of health issues within her family.

Im over the moon that Im back, over the moon in every aspect of my life, she said. Its so much better that Im here.

Through networking, she met Black Tie & Tailpipes Gala volunteer Jessie Tait, who recommended Schoeb for this years event.

And despite their subpar record for the majority of her lifetime, shes happy that her subject turned out to be a player for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Im a Buccos fan, through and through.

For more information about Paints By Kait, visit paintsbykait.com.

Harry Funk is a TribLive news editor, specifically serving as editor of the Hampton, North Allegheny, North Hills, Pine Creek and Bethel Park journals. A professional journalist since 1985, he joined TribLive in 2022. You can contact Harry at hfunk@triblive.com.

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Baldwin Township artist helps launch Vintage Grand Prix with painting of Paul Skenes - TribLIVE