GROWING UP, THE WALLS OF CYNTHIA HUSTON’S BEDROOM WERE COVERED—not by the typical coming-of-age posters of the day but by her own drawings, taped from corner to corner, like a private gallery. Decades later, her four walls have expanded into a studio of her own, where Huston now teaches children to paint, igniting in her students the same spark that once lit her imagination in the basement of a local artist’s home.
“My parents saw the interest I had in art and enrolled me in a painting class in middle school,” she recalls. “I learned how to paint with pastels and oil paint and was hooked forever. It’s kind of nice to think that now all these years later, I can pay it forward in a way with the lessons I teach.”
Huston was born and raised in Atlanta but has lived in Charleston for the last 20 years. As happy as she is having her hands covered in paint, art wasn’t Huston’s chosen career path after leaving school. Instead, she graduated from Clemson University with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and went on to lead a successful career as a sales executive in telecommunications for two decades—though the desire to paint never left her. While living in D.C., Atlanta, Kansas City and Houston, she availed herself of every opportunity to hone her talent, finding local artists whose work she admired in each of the cities and taking classes at their studios between business trips. It was, in a way, a continuation of the intimate, studio-based instruction she’d loved as a child. She also studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Houston, weaving art into the fabric of a life defined by numbers and deadlines.
By her 40s, the success Huston had enjoyed in her telecommunications career was dwarfed by a desire to raise a family. Years later, her time to focus on art came in the form of teaching it at Palmetto Christian Academy, where she spent six years before at last prioritizing her own career as an artist and teaching children’s art from her home studio.
Huston has become known over the last seven years for her bold brushstrokes, impressionistic style and color-driven compositions, drawing on a great confluence of artists whose work has inspired her own, both directly and indirectly. “I’ve studied under Laurie Meyer of Meyer Vogl Gallery for over 10 years,” says the artist. “She has become my mentor and dear friend.”
Huston has also studied the work of Richard Schmid and greatly admires Georgia O’Keefe—though not so much for her style as for her “tenacity as a female artist and her pursuit of improving and evolving her practice until late in her 90s,” Huston says. “She was an amazing artist, and I’ve traveled to Santa Fe just to be able to walk where she walked and see what inspired her to paint. Still, if I could paint like any of the old masters, I would choose Paul Cezanne. I love his use of impressionistic brushstrokes that edged toward abstracting the subjects he painted.”
In her own work, Huston favors oil paint mixed with cold wax, which is applied with a palette knife for texture and moved about the canvas with a brush. “The wax provides texture without diluting the hue of the paint, and the palette knife helps keep the painting loose and painterly,” she says. “These days, I spend most of my time painting commissioned work, so as I start a painting, my color scheme is either chosen according to a client’s décor colors or based on my mood. Most recently, I have been commissioned to do quite a lot of figurative work and to capture particular memories on the canvas for my clients. I really enjoy these paintings because I know how special they are to the collectors. In my own noncommissioned work, I’ll see something that grabs me emotionally and feel the need to capture that on canvas. When this happens, the painting really works because I’m emotionally attached.”
Huston’s process relies on the fresh perspective of time, working on a painting until near completion before putting it to the side where she can see it. “Taking time to look at the painting with fresh eyes over a week or so really helps to finish the piece,” she notes.
Living in Charleston, Huston finds herself immersed in inspiration. “We are surrounded by so much beauty and wildlife here,” she says. “We see the seasons change not by the color of the trees but by the changing colors of the marsh and the constant rise and fall of the tides. I will never tire of painting these landscapes—which, after completing a complex painting like a portrait, give me something of an escape. Landscapes renew my energy.”
Regardless of the painting, Huston welcomes viewers to form their own interpretations. Her greatest goal, however, is the emotional connection she elicits with her work. “Painting brings me peace, and I like to try and pass this peaceful feeling onto the viewer,” she says. “I often have collectors walk into my tent at a show and say that my tent feels peaceful as they look at my paintings. This is when I know I’ve done my job well. I believe God gave us so much beauty here on Earth to enjoy, and it’s an honor to be able to capture that beauty on canvas. I also like to share with my students that we are created in God’s image, so we are all creative. When we tap into that creativity, it can bring us great joy and peace.”
Creative blocks are not something Huston struggles with, though she does admit to reaching plateaus in her work. “I strive to improve with every brushstroke and painting, and that’s not always a simple task,” she says. “When this happens, I’ll sometimes take a break for a few days until I find myself missing my studio and the joy of painting. I also find that workshops can help me move through the plateaus, as well as visiting galleries for inspiration—all of which makes my return to the studio feel exciting and refreshing.”
As with most artists, Huston finds her greatest challenges lie in the business aspect of her career. “I struggle sometimes with having enough hours in the days and weeks to keep up with commissions, shows, gallery sales, teaching and having enough time to play around with new ideas and be creative—just for the fun of it,” she notes. “It’s also a challenge for me to keep up with social media and marketing on top of all that.”
For Huston, painting is more than pigment and form—it’s a wordless conversation of faith, feeling and the ever-changing beauty of the Lowcountry. Each movement of her palette knife and each brushstroke is an act of gratitude and a reminder that creativity—like the tides along the marshlands she loves—ebbs and flows but always returns. In every canvas, she invites others to see the world with the same sense of wonder that filled the walls of her childhood bedroom.
A member of the Oil Painters of America, the American Impressionist Society and the Charleston Artist Guild, Huston has been juried into national shows and earned recognition at local festivals. Returning to her Atlanta roots, Huston will be featured in the Trinity School’s upcoming Spotlight on Art Show. In South Carolina, her work is represented at Verve Interiors in Charleston, MISC Gallery in Murrells Inlet and Perspective Gallery in Mount Pleasant, as well as The Carolina Fine Art Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina. She continues to create custom pieces for private collectors. *
Liesel Schmidt lives in Navarre, Florida, and works as a freelance writer for local and regional magazines. She is also a web content writer and book editor. Follow her on X at @laswrites or download her novels, Coming Home to You, The Secret of Us and Life Without You, at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
