Lita is an internationally known artist, painter and sculptor. Her works focus on light, time and space. She’s been a recognized name in the art world since the 1970s and landed one of the largest public art commissions in state government history: a two block long installation in the Capitol complex of Sacramento. She and her husband Carey Peck (son of legendary actor Gregory Peck) had lived in their Malibu home for 25 years. They have four adult children.
The night before the fire, Lita and Carey were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary in downtown Los Angeles, attending a concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall before spending a night at a nearby hotel. They were awakened hours later by a phone call from their son in New York, who told them there was a fire near the 101 Freeway.
Lita immediately called their daughter, Jasmine, who was still living with them at the Malibu house. Jasmine didn’t think there was any immediate danger, but said she would evacuate with the dog just in case.
The next morning, the mandatory evacuation prevented them from getting back into Malibu, so Lita and Carey went instead to stay with another daughter in Venice. It was there that they learned later that their Malibu property had been destroyed.
Lita and Carey didn’t just lose their home; Lita also lost numerous small art studios along with three shipping containers full of art and art supplies. Decades of her work were destroyed in the fire.
For weeks afterward, Lita woke up every morning and cried for hours. She had lost a complete set of brand new sculptures along with nearly 20 commissioned paintings that she’d been working on – none of which had been photographed before the fire. Thousands of drawings going all the back to Lita’s childhood were now in ashes, along with extremely rare pigments used in her work (especially the ultramarine blue that was her signature). She also lost a book she had been working on for more than 30 years, which was written on paper (with no computer backup).
“I don’t have to be afraid of anything now, because what else is there? I’m ready for the apocalypse!” she joked.
Prior to the fire, Lita and a friend had spent weeks sorting through all her notes, letters, photos and sketches at the request of the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. She used to think of her own papers as “worthless,” but now realizes the importance of seeing your own value. “We all have this thing of not honoring who we are…I will never not recognize who I am again.”
