James C. Litz, a disabled Vietnam War veteran who blossomed from a boozing and unemployed ex-Army machine gunner into an internationally known painter of oils and acrylics in the primitive style, died Tuesday in Batavia Veterans Home. He was 61.

Litz’s distinctive paintings often depicted scenes of Western New York, bursting with color and a childlike whimsy that captivated private collectors and museum-goers around the country and in Europe.

“As an adult, he was almost childlike himself,” said his brother, George. “He was a jewel. He was something special.”

Litz received no formal training in art, and his surreal transformation into a sought-after painter whose pieces sold for upwards of $5,000 each seemed as if it were concocted in Hollywood.

It began with a simple baby-sitting assignment in the early 1980s.

To pass time, Litz would draw pictures in pencils and crayons with his two young nephews, and together they would color in the drawings.

Litz enjoyed it so much, he began buying paints and turning his drawings into paintings.

The late Tony Sisti, also a local artist, and Will Moses, the grandson of Grandma Moses, one of the country’s best known primitive artists, encouraged Litz to keep going.

Gallery owner Barry Johnson fell in love with Litz’s early paintings and immediately offered to do a showing of his work.

“What stood out to me was the pure color, the sense of composition, the imagination,” said Johnson, who owns Benjaman’s Art Gallery on Elmwood Avenue.

Litz had his detractors, who believed his paintings were too simple.

But Johnson, a painter himself, said Litz’s work was far more complex and demanding than met the eye.

“It’s a different gift,” said Johnson. “Jimmy made a flat piece of paper come to life. It wasn’t life as we see it, but . . . Jimmy retired from the real world and went into his own world.”

For many years, Litz worked constantly, often into the night, and he probably created more than 1,000 paintings, including commissioned pieces.

He painted with his left hand in a basement studio of his Cheektowaga home, often portraying a joyful and humorous one-dimensional world of animals, people, buildings and other scenery completely out of proportion to each other.

Houses, for example, often were smaller than people and flowers were larger than trees, Johnson said.

“He worked from total imagination,” he said.

Among the famous collectors of his paintings were Jackie Gleason, Roy Rogers, Bill Cosby, Carlos Montoya and opera star Patrice Munsel — not to mention numerous museums and galleries, including the Musee D’Art Naif de L’ile de France in Paris and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.

A Buffalo native, Litz grew up in Cheektowaga and was a graduate of Cleveland Hill High School.

He was drafted into the Army in 1968 and served four months as a machine gunner in the jungles of Vietnam, until being disabled and sent home.

Litz was never the same following his Vietnam experience, and he struggled for many years with drinking too much and an inability to hang onto a job.

Painting turned his life around, and Litz acknowledged in a 1983 interview with The News its therapeutic affect on him: “When I paint,” he said, “it’s like the only real time I am able to communicate what’s going on inside my head. It’s the best way to get my ideas out.”

Early in his career, Litz wondered if people would appreciate his paintings, but he wasn’t overly concerned about it.

“If it doesn’t turn out that people like my stuff well enough to buy it,” he said, “well that’s OK too, because I paint for the satisfaction and for the feeling of peace it gives me.”

Nonetheless, Litz was thrilled by the attention his paintings garnered.

“He was so flattered, so proud to finally accomplish something,” recalled George Litz.

In addition to his artistic talents, Litz was known for his outsized personality, his love of Buffalo and his unusual way of looking at the world.

He had a quirky nickname for seemingly everyone he knew and an uncanny ability to connect with strangers, said his sister, Mary Puszert.

Puszert recalled being with her brother in a crowded but silent elevator among grim-faced strangers in a local hospital.

“By the time we’d get to the floor we were going to, Jimmy would have everyone in the elevator smiling,” she said.

Suffering from severe depression and diabetes, Litz hadn’t been able to paint since about 2000, according to family.

But he recently donated six of his paintings to an auction to benefit the Hunter’s Hope Foundation, and two dozen of his paintings were acquired in recent weeks by the Burchfield Penney Art Center for a future showing, said George Litz.

In addition to his brother George and sister Mary, he is survived by his wife of 23 years, the former Beverly J. Gast; his mother, Barbara A.; another sister, Kathleen M. Marranca; and three other brothers, Retired Lt. Col. Thomas E., Daniel E., and Michael A.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at 10 a. m. Tuesday in Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, 8500 Main St., Clarence.