JAMES MILLER b. Spokane, Washington EDUCATION Laguna College of Art and Design, Laguna Beach, CA SELECTED RECENT EXHIBITIONS 2011 2010 2009 2009
Ekphrasis, Mod Melange, Los Angeles, CA Gallery Artists: Selected Works, George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles Incognito Benefit Show, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA OsCene, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA Mod Melange LA, Mishelle Moross Gallery, Los Angeles futureproof (Two-Person Exhibition), Tosti Studios Gallery, Laguna Beach One, Tosti Studios Gallery, Laguna Beach Venice Art Walk, Venice, CA Incognito Benefit Show, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica Best of the Best: LCAD Juried Exhibition, Laguna Beach New Paintings: James Miller and Orion Fisher, Tosti Studios Gallery, Laguna Beach
STATEMENT My current work deals with the construction of psychological and pictorial atmospheres defined by intersecting themes of artifice, absence, and the sublime. This investigation begins with a formal interest in pictorial space, as experimenting with strategies of flattening and expanding illusionistic depth and of drawing awareness to the picture’s format; while setting a stage for narrative possibilities to emerge. Often referencing artificially-generated models and diorama scenarios within the studio, my images represent controlled assemblages and observations that are liberated from references to scale and locale found in the natural world. As such, I hope that while I deal with the concerns of picture making, my work may be received as a phenomenological experience of location and time. In Lovesongs, the painting’s formal and narrative structures evolved through a combination of abstract painting, the construction and observation of set-pieces, and realistic references to personal and found photographic sources. For me, the painting presents a compressed space in which memory is contingent with hallucination; abstractions materialize as physical backdrops recede into obscurity.