Finding Joy in the Smallest Moments: A Conversation with Kristin Divers

A Master Pastelist reflects on industry, intimacy, and the overlooked beauty just outside our front doors.

It starts with a nest. Not one she sought out, but one that found her—hidden in a hanging flower basket, nearly missed during a walk across her own yard. That unexpected discovery became a painting, and then a meditation. Not just on birds or spring or the circle of life—but on what happens when we pause, pay attention, and look for meaning in the ordinary.

This is how Kristin Divers works: attuned, reflective, quietly resolute. A Master Pastelist and long-time Pittsburgh-based artist, Divers has built her career on depicting the spaces where people live, work, gather, and seek comfort. But more than the places themselves, it’s the moments within them that draw her in.

“My personal calling as an artist is to focus on the moments,” she says. “Sometimes even little fleeting moments—but they’re there.”

Born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, Divers studied studio art, psychology, education, and art therapy in both undergraduate and graduate school. Her art—nationally and internationally exhibited and recognized by institutions like the Butler Institute of American Art—blends technical precision with deep emotional intent. She is a Master Pastelist with the Pastel Society of America and previously served on the Executive Committee of its Board of Governors. Though now emeritus, her influence within the pastel community continues to resonate.

She works in pastel for its immediacy, its tactility, and the way it allows her to be fully present in her process. There’s no brush between her hand and the surface—just color, pressure, and intuition.

“I love working directly with the color,” she says. “It gives you the feel of drawing, but with the expressive color and layering of painting.”

Her last major body of work focused on America’s steel industry—a deeply personal, multi-year series that took her inside mills in the Midwest and along the country’s industrial spine. What could have been purely architectural, or documentary became something more intimate: a study of strength, sacrifice, and hidden beauty. While the drama of the machinery loomed large, it was the people—the workers—that she tried to center whenever possible.

“It was kind of a love letter to my husband,” she admits. “That series focused on work, on showing the inside of an industry most people never get to see.”

In this way, her work resonates with painters like Andrew Wyeth, whose realist depictions of rural life offered quiet emotional weight, or Edward Hopper, whose paintings of solitude asked viewers to feel the story between the brushstrokes. But where those artists often leaned into stillness or loneliness, Divers turns toward warmth.

Her upcoming exhibit is centered on the idea of fleeting joy—not in opposition to hardship, but in recognition of it.

“We live in a broken world,” she says. “There’s a lot of art that focuses on that—and that’s important. But there are also those small, unexpected moments that bring us peace, comfort, or inspiration. I want to hold space for that, too.”

The exhibit will feature everyday encounters: a child’s expression, a shared glance, a sudden burst of light. Nests, naturally, make an appearance.

“We see more around us when we’re looking for it,” she explains. “The nests were always there. I just wasn’t seeing them until I started paying attention.”

Throughout our conversation, it’s clear Divers is someone who sees. Not just the surface of things, but their emotional structure. She wants her paintings to invite that same mindfulness in others.

“I want people to walk through the show and connect it to their own lives,” she says. “To see the moments they’ve experienced—with other people, with nature, even just within themselves—and maybe walk away with a little more awareness of what’s meaningful.”

There’s no need to overstate it. Her work doesn’t demand a grand message or spectacle. It simply offers space. The viewer brings the rest.

As for what’s next? She isn’t rushing.

“This theme of moments—of fleeting joy—it feels like a thread I’m still pulling on,” she says. “And I want to see where it goes.”

---

Kristin Divers’ upcoming exhibition opens Saturday, August 23, 6-8 pm at Mark Rengers Gallery (2nd Location - First National Bank Exhibition Hall -2nd Floor 604 Beaver Street, Sewickley PA). Her work can also be viewed at Moments: Kristin Divers Solo Exhibition | Mark Rengers Gallery. For examples of Kristin’s Steel Series.