CHEKHOV, WHO KNEW SOMETHING OF VERSATILITY, SAID THERE IS NOTHING NEW IN ART BUT TALENT, though it’s doubtful he had the full range of gifts of Chris and Carmen Bilton in mind. To call the South Carolina-based artists a Renaissance couple is to understate the case considerably.

Witness: Chris Bilton draws, paints, sculpts, and is adept at animation. His paintings were showcased in April at the respected ArtFields Festival and soon will be featured again at the annual Piccolo Spoleto Outdoor Art Exhibition in Charleston. He also designs and fashions musical instruments, composes and performs music, and has taught in the college setting.

Carmen Bilton is a sculptor who likewise draws, paints and has been engaged in art education for years.

After graduating from the College of Charleston in 1987, both earned a Master of Fine Arts from The Graduate School of Figurative Art of The New York Academy of Art in 1991 and today preside over Bilton Arts Studios, a complex of spaces in their rural hometown of Eutawville, South Carolina.

The Biltons’ work, which continually explores new vistas and approaches to creation, has been exhibited and sold internationally. That they became artists, met and married now seems preordained.

“I drew early and incessantly from the time I was about 10 months old,” Chris Bilton recalls. “Drawing was always my friend. It humors me. It solves problems for me. It generates all I do and always has.”

For her part, Carmen Bilton had wanted to be an artist since childhood, though she was briefly diverted to math, engineering and computers when she went off to school, first at Newberry College. “But I quickly went the less practical route when I took my first studio art course, where I found I had a passion for art that I wanted to pursue, so I switched tracks to study art and psychology,” she says. “I had decided to try to figure out how to be an artist by the time I met Chris, and I shared an ad I saw for studying figurative art at the New York Academy of Art, which led to us both being accepted when we applied a couple of years later. We studied there and stayed in New York another few years.”

There they both played music in a band, sculpted for toy makers and taught art classes on the side while he painted for a mural company and she sculpted for a famous artist. They loved the energy and stimulation of New York yet yearned for a quieter life.

Settling in his birthplace of Eutawville in 1993, largely to be closer to family, Chris Bilton taught music lessons, made and repaired musical instruments, and created wood benches in addition to his art. She moonlighted by teaching drama in the program Carmen’s Academy of Creativity and Goodness. Together, they’ve cast authentic plaster molding and capitals for historic renovations, including historic homes in Charleston.

“We’ve used our skills to do many side jobs over the years, large and small,” she says. “We stay busy. There’s always something interesting going on at Bilton Arts Studio. We’re currently renovating the building where Chris’ parents had a grocery store for many years, and Chris paints in his studio there. We’ll open a gallery there soon.”

Especially exciting for the couple, who have mainly focused on the marketing of his art of late, is his strikingly imaginative and playful Equilibrium series. Each piece in the series depicts two figures “in harmonious configurations,” one figure supporting the other, which he says reinforces “the balance and oneness” of the relationship. The juxtaposition of subjects explores an initially disconcerting but ultimately fascinating expression of cognitive dissonance.

“It’s like a puzzle to solve,” Chris Bilton says. “My paintings tell me something different every day.”

The Biltons are also enthusiastic about renewing friendships and making a splash during the Piccolo Spoleto Festival (May 22–June 7), an exhibit and interaction they hope will heighten exposure and grow their own gallery as well.

With two daughters, a distinguished track record as professional artists, and no end of artistic and art business ambitions, they are happily ensconced in a rural setting that best suits their philosophies of living and growing a business.

“I have more like a ‘if you build it, they will come’ kind of mentality,” says Chris Bilton, whose animations can be viewed on the Bilton Animation YouTube channel. “The business end is about figuring out what to do next, mostly a product of necessity. I have faith and believe in what we do. The goal is to always try to connect the things I make to the people that are drawn to it. It is a special relationship.”

Being an artist is about making art, practicing art and developing as an artist by doing the work, says Carmen Bilton. “But some of the effort and creativity must go to the business side of things,” she adds. “We’re in the process of pushing Bilton Arts Studio further, with our plans to open our Eutawville studio and gallery to the public, just a quick 10 minutes off I-95.”

In addition to the Piccolo Spoleto Outdoor Art Exhibition, they are looking for just the right fit for other art events to add to their calendar and reach a still wider audience.

Meanwhile, Chris Bilton has exhibited his musical instruments at Piccolo and at the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center in Florence, South Carolina.

They also hope to build a metal foundry to create bronze, aluminum and steel sculpture.

Both employ multiple materials in their art. For him it is oil paint on canvas or linen for painting and various media in sculpture: clays, plasters, resins and rubbers, wood and “lots of wood glue.” She is drawn principally but not exclusively to sculpting in clay. “We cast with plaster mixes, but I’ve also worked directly in plaster, a less traditional approach for figurative sculpture. Sometimes I do a bit of topiary shaping of shrubs and small trees in our yard for a fun sculptural addition to our yard and gardens, along with our figurative sculpture and the plants and flowers we grow,” she says. With her drawing and painting, as in her sculpture, Carmen Bilton’s goal is to convey “the essence of forms and a genuine expression of feelings.”

What inspires them as artists is diverse, not only accomplished artists of past and present but nature and life itself. “Sometimes I suddenly see the world as open, and when that happens, I always have something to love or admire,” Chris Bilton says. “Whatever that is becomes the focus of everything. Sometimes I can ride that like a wave.”

“I love sculpting people most,” Carmen Bilton adds. “I’m also drawn to portray other subjects from nature, such as animals or landscapes. These are things that touch me and feed my spirit.”

The Biltons are keenly aware of the joys and challenges of a life in art, the fulfillment they find and the ways they wish the viewer to be enriched by their work.

“Being an artist is an opportunity to share our fascination with nature, with people and all we find meaningful,” Carmen Bilton says. “When you’re given a talent, it feels like something you’re supposed to do, to develop that ability. You’re driven by the sense that it’s what you’re meant to do. When an artwork finds the right home, it’s deeply meaningful to have the chance to enrich a life in a small way, by bringing joy to someone.”

For Chris Bilton, the equation is simple: “I don’t know another way of living.”

The arts are central to what they embody, what motivates and enthralls them. “Making art, sharing art, teaching about art and the techniques to make it are all ways that feel meant to be the part we play in the universe,” Carmen Bilton concludes. *

Bill Thompson covers the arts, design and books.