Biography
D. Milan Brudvig’s path to painting has been a long one. Drawn to both music and visual art from an early age, she spent more than forty years as a professional cellist and teacher while continuing to explore her interest in painting. During her years as a freelance musician in Washington, DC, she studied at the Art League of Alexandria and earned a certificate in computer graphics from the Corcoran School of Art.
Painting offered a counterpoint to the discipline of classical music—a space for experimentation, intuition, and discovery. Eventually, Milan Brudvig committed more fully to the visual arts, pursuing continuing education through the Rhode Island School of Design, where she completed a certificate in painting in 2024. She continues to develop her practice through classes and workshops.
Since moving to the Richmond area in 2024, Brudvig has expanded her exhibition experience, presenting her first solo gallery exhibition in June 2026 with a series of acrylic paintings inspired by classical music. In fall 2026, she became an Artist in Residence at Crossroads Art Center.
Her background in music continues to inform her approach to painting. Her work draws on musical compositions, landscapes, and personal experiences of particular times and places, reflecting an ongoing interest in translating these varied sources into visual form.
Artist Statement
My artwork explores the connections between music, landscape, and the experience of time. Whether responding to a musical passage or a place, I look for rhythms, patterns, and movements that can be translated into color, texture, and gesture. Some works draw on the structure and duration of music, condensing a linear experience into a single canvas; others begin with the forms, atmosphere, and shifting impressions of a landscape.
Time also shapes the process of painting itself. Quick, physical gestures alternate with slower, more deliberate building and moments of stepping back, looking, and contemplating. Through varied approaches to brushwork, the use of brayers and palette knives, and the layering and reworking of surfaces, a painting develops through both immediate action and reflection.
I move between abstraction and realism, acrylic and oil, depending on what a painting requires.