Charlie Mills
 
Myrtle Beach No. 127
Oil Enamel on Canvas
65" x 31"
This painting recently won first prize for two dimensional work at the Fall Seacoast Guild Exhibition.
Charlie Mills
North Myrtle Beach, SC 
Artist Website

Artist Statement:

Forty-eight years of commercial work served to round my skills at rendering the visual world. Even as a student, however, I was more fascinated with the intuitive suggestion inherent in abstract painting. I sensed the deeper need for non-literal expression. For over 50 years, I've tried to bypass the usual process of pleasing the eye and the mind-a literal portrayal. I try to short-circuit directly from the Intuitive. The resulting images I might call "Impulse Splashes". They come from the unconscious. Their best expression, for me, though, is incomplete without visual parameters-controls from the conscious mind, such as defined shapes and edges and hence the calligraphic shapes and pin-striping. So my effort at the ultimate visual expression requires the balance of the conscious and the unconscious-the mental and the intuitive.

Artist Biography:

At about age four, Charlie would spread scrap paper on the floor in order to make drawings. His mother would sharpen a pencil for him with a kitchen knife and he would draw planes, guns and tanks - the theme of the day. He painted all through childhood and later attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond to study commercial art. Here he became aware of the innate urges of working abstractly with paint and began such works.
Charlie attended graduate school at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. In Santa Barbara Charlie spent seven years designing graphics which included brochures, logo design, technical drawings and prize winning slide presentations-some of which were shown at the Pentagon.

While in California, Charlie met his wife Linda. Wanting some land of their own, they moved to West Virginia and purchased 25 acres of meadow and woods where they built a shop and cabin. Charlie's commercial art career converted to sign painting. This simple lifestyle provided a 10 year retreat-an opportunity to mature and experiment with various artistic directions.
After relocating to Myrtle Beach, Charlie spent over thirty years creating murals and painting portraits. This experience rounded his five decades of artistic expression and out of that emerged his abstract painting in full maturity.


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