FIGURE TO GROUND:

Paintings from a mobile studio | CLOSER & INNOCENCE series


Exhibition reviewing 10 years work from 1993-2003. The exhibition included the first showing of what became known as TRUCKSCAPES. Miller began working from a large truck, converting it for use as a mobile studio to work on site at various locations in close proximity to where he lived on the Sligo/Roscommon and Leitrim border. The truck afforded the protection to make paintings directly in the face of nature and to practice working in the landscape with similar engagement with subject to working from the human form in the studio. By 2000 he had begun to rework paintings and to include the frame of the narrow doorway ; the view through which he looked while working. In subsequent showings these became known as TRUCKSCAPES. Regarded by the artist as a development of his studio portrait practice, he emphasised this connection as they were Installed around two large scale figurative series of works on paper that focused on direct and close encounter with the human subject . CLOSER drawings were highly charged observational works (including the Anatomy Drawings 1993) and the INNOCENCE watercolours related to Eastern learning which he felt facilitated the work with landscape.

Essay | Interview
Images of FIGURE to Ground- Truckscapes

FIGURE TO GROUND: selected works

INstallation photos, RHA 2003 and Documentary Photpos, mobile studio
Figure to ground: Install & Documentary

Exhibition Installation photographs and working documentary images


Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery. Dublin. 2003

My Image
Figure to ground: CLOSER

Large scale portrait drawings of family and friends made between1996-2000 using charcoal on paper 154 x 122 cm (5’x 4’) where the sitter is straddled, lying on the paper and drawn inches from their face. Initially the body is traced, then attention moves to the head, to portraiture with a close almost overwhelming focus, and single point perspective. see more


Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery. Dublin. 2003

My Image
Figure to ground: INNOCENCE

A series of 40 experimental large scale watercolours (152 x 122 cm/ 5’ x 4’) that followed the CLOSER series. They emerged as an adapted physical form of calligraphy during after an extended period of study of Tai Ji and indirectly influenced the approach to landscape. See more


Royal Hibernian Academy, Gallagher Gallery. Dublin. 2003

FIGURE TO GROUND: Links

Selected Press
Irish Times (pdf) Aidan Dunne. 18/1/03
Sunday Tribune Marianne Hartigan, 9/1/03
The View-RTE 28/1/03
Irish Times: Sligo Studios. 2004 G.Tipton