OIL painter Hilarie Lambert will tell you that, while she enjoys painting the familiar—vintage toys, notable architecture or coastal scenes—nothing about her work is “ordinary.” Through the filter of light in an egret’s wings in flight or the way a newspaper crumbles under just-caught blue crabs, Lambert reveals the beauty in what we might have forgotten or gotten too busy to notice: the magic of the everyday.

Originally from the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York (Canandaigua), she was a graphic designer and illustrator for major corporations before moving to Charleston 16 years ago. “My focus turned to oils and painting outside on location,” Lambert says. “With so much to paint here—I was enchanted by the water, the light, the color in the shadows—I set out to capture that on canvas.”

Since then, she has been invited to show at both national and international exhibits, including the Women Painting Women exhibitions, and has won numerous awards and accolades, such as Southwest Art Magazine’s “Top Emerging Artists” and Figurative Honorable Mention at the Oil Painters of America National Exhibition.

A self-proclaimed “gypsy” with a love for travel, she maintains a studio on James Island, South Carolina, where she keeps busy painting commissions.