Painter found career early on
Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Annette Carter took that quote to heart and solved the dilemma; she never grew up.
Carter, 53, works and paints in her Liberty Lake studio, The Art Chalet. The shop is kid and “inner child” friendly, filled with supplies, photos, toys, books and paintings. Carter, wearing a necklace made of colored pencils, is quick to show off her collection of wind-up toys and paper dolls that she played with as a child.
Her career, or way of life, began in junior high school in Idaho Falls when she learned to draw the human body. “I got a wonderful art teacher that moved with us to the high school. Mr. Bob Whitney taught us the hardest thing first – the body. Hour after hour we drew muscles and then we would draw faces, our own faces being the hardest. He said if we could do this, everything else would be easy because we have trained our hands to draw what our eyes see. And he was right.”
Carter planned on getting married out of high school but field trips to college and university art departments filled her with new possibilities. “I subsequently broke off my engagement, went to college, and had the time of my life.” For work, she drew portraits in malls as she attended art classes at Ricks College in Idaho and Brigham Young University in Utah.
She did end up marrying, and had four children. “Being an artist is really the only thing I’ve wanted to be besides a mother.” When the children were older, she took up watercolors, attending workshops in Maine, New Jersey, New York and Washington.
Carter moved to the Liberty Lake area 12 years ago to be closer to her mother. She started teaching art in her home and, after outgrowing two home studios, she purchased the old Liberty Lake post office in 2003 and opened The Art Chalet in 2004.
She teaches about seven classes a week to students age 5 to adult. “I get lots of hugs,” she said. She teaches fine art drawing skills using watercolors, pastels, ink and pencil, and, best of all, she gets to share her passion.
Her work, loose but traditional, is soft and reminiscent of simple pleasures including lazy days by the lake, taking tea in the garden or listening to the sounds of the sea in a sea shell.
Carter considers art therapeutic, whether you’re looking at a work or creating one. She also considers paintings to be the ultimate souvenir of a person, place or thing of the past.
“My favorite thing in the whole world is to sit in a beautiful garden and paint the ocean, lakes, mountains … and every day that I can look out my window and see those things makes me happy, but a painting of those things would do just as well.”