Wendy Bilas

Charlotte, North Carolina

Wendy Bilas is a contemporary impressionist who works with oil paint to create lovely birds, landscapes, florals and occasionally abstracts.

Wendy Bilas is a contemporary impressionist painter. Her paintings are rendered with loose, expressive brushwork and a focus on the effects of light. Wendy's passion for the natural world allows her to transform familiar vistas and images into bold interpretations of color, rhythm, and emotion.

While inspired by classic impressionists, Wendy uses her own sense of composition and calculated brushstroke to give her work a simplicity and a soulfulness all its own. Raised in Maryland, Wendy has degrees from Duke and Wake Forest. She lives in Charlotte, NC, with her husband, ESPN personality Jay Bilas. They have two adult children, one of whom -- Tori -- is also a working artist.

Wendy is inspired by visual artists Andy Braitman, Eric Aho, Brian Rutenberg, as well as poets Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, and John Updike. She is endlessly moved by poetry and sometimes collages poems into the background of her paintings. You can find her listening to the Avett Brothers while painting as well.

Art is how Wendy celebrates the beauty of nature. Her paintings are visual expressions of the passion she feels when she observes the natural world and the flora, fauna and images within it. Through the course of her career, art has not only allowed Wendy to connect to nature, but it has also connected her to the people who share why paintings resonate or why particular birds have special meaning in their lives. It closes the circle and reminds Wendy why she was called to paint.