Michael Miller’s goals change with each peace of art depending on what he feels is important to the image. He’s primarily an abstract painter. However, his diverse training in a number of mediums influences his methods and techniques. He studied painting with Frosecchi Paolo and instructors in New York at the Art Students League which included including Kikuo Saito, Bruce Dorfman, Larry Poons and Frank O’Cain. At an earlier point in his career, Miller was also an active photographer. One of the most decisive experiences of his life as a professional took place in 2006 when the artist moved to Mozambique (Mapuo), and developed a love for Mozambique religious objects and the designs and the sub-Saharan Africa’s crafts. Today, he paints on both unprimed and primed canvas to ensure that visual contamination is better incorporated in his work.
Miller also makes collections with painted canvas cutouts that he suspends using wires in wooden boxes. “A chaos of color, light, line and pattern, this is the world we live in,” says Miller. He adds that this is the starting point for his landscapes. Just from this disorder, he breaks down the images into their essential elements and once this is done, he then reassembles them. He does this by carefully trickling in more chaos in the painting process until he feels he’s struck a balance between a more accessible and easier image and the wild nature of landscape. During his drawing process, he brings an order to the composition by editing and simplifying the large amount of detail before him.
