Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but so too is composition, color and mood – at least for watercolor painter Carol Milton. When a scene strikes her, she takes a photo, draws a sketch or imprints the image in her mind. She stores away everything she sees – maybe Tuesday’s lakefront view is nice, but the light near the woods on Friday afternoon is inspirational too. For her landscape and seascape paintings, which are featured in the current Vienna Arts Society show, she takes an artistic license to mix and match images and color palettes to create the feeling she wants a particular piece to convey.
“I’m not necessarily painting the scene – I’m painting the mood, what it feels like to be there,” she said. Even the photos she takes are not previews for the later paintings; Milton said they’re only reminders of what inspired her, which frequently can’t be seen by the time the camera has captured the image.
Photos and sketches help her original vision become “burnt into” her mind along with the energy and emotion behind it. “It’s like a little dream,” she said. The show is called “Just a Moment” because it highlights the fleeting glimpses of what Milton sees.
Drawing inspiration from one area and transferring it to another is something of a signature for Milton. She is a past president of the Vienna Arts Society and organized workshops and visiting artists for five years – she still frequents workshops of different media to get new ideas for her paintings, and she spent the morning learning the process of batik fabric dyeing before sitting the VAS gallery.
“Everybody has some information to give you,” Milton said. “I think all artists are interested in all media, but are more proficient at one thing.”
In addition to the photos or sketches, Milton works on a small value study before she begins work on a new painting. In a space no bigger than a 4”x6” print, she plans the value for her painting – which areas will be dark, which light, and how the viewers’ eye will travel from one to another across the composition. She uses black marker and a little water to keep it fluid, planning how the watercolors will move across the paper.
MILTON AND HER HUSBAND lived in seven houses in ten years, all over the country. They settled in Northern Virginia about 24 years ago. They now live near Colvin Run Elementary School in Vienna, where the community borders Great Falls and Reston. She enjoys the area, and says the geographical diversity is good for a landscape artist: “The terrain is different here.”
The area’s people also helped Milton’s art. Growing up, she had drawn but not painted, and first picked up a brush when a club meeting in Chicago featured watercolor master Nancy Fortunato. Shortly after that introduction, she moved to Vienna and decided to pursue more art instruction, working with Herndon artist Lassie Corbett. “She got me used to showing my work,” Milton said. “I got a little encouragement.” The push from another artist is what Milton needed to bring her paintings into the public eye. “They’re your babies, until you get too many,” she laughed.
Her own home is a little like a gallery, but not of her own work. “Actually, I’m a collector,” she said. “I just bought a painting today.”
The features that draw her to others’ paintings are what she likes to include in her own work; “I’m always drawn to the landscapes,” she said, and the paintings she buys are usually water media.
Finding the landscapes for her own paintings come when leaves the familiar behind. “I have to get lost,” she explained. “I find the most beautiful things when I get off the path I’m always on.”
Milton’s paintings at the Vienna gallery, on display through May 25, portray a serene but unpopulated world: there are beaches, forests and lakes – but no people. The only suggestion of civilization is a cluster of rowboats. This natural world is what Milton wants people to see.
“That’s my intention – what was created by Mother Nature and that’s it,” she said. “If I put a person in there, it gets very narrative. They almost have to blend in with the landscape or they become what the painting is about.”
And people are clearly not what Milton’s paintings are about – they are focused instead on “just a moment” when circumstances are right for a moving image.