Harland Miller: The Letter Paintings
186.7 x 132.1 x 5.1 cm
"When people read text, not just on paintings, but anywhere, they start to extract personal meaning and connect to it in a personal way – or not. But when they do, it is usually something intimate they've always thought, which seems to them to be bound up in the painting and nothing to do with what was in my head when I made it."
- Harland Miller
Arton Contemporary is excited to exhibit our collection of Harland Miller works. Harland Miller, both a successful artist and author, draws inspiration from words and the inherent possibilities of language in the visual field. He employs humor, irony, and emotion to explore the complexities of painting, printmaking, and the written word. Miller’s work combines aspects of Pop Art, abstraction in the pieces ‘OUI’ and ‘LUV’ in the Arton Collection.
‘The Letter Paintings’ begin with the idea of using a single word as a book title, deconstructing and reconstructing the word through gestural abstraction. The letters layered on top of each other build a visually interesting composition. Miller dismantles not only the structure of the word but the word ‘Love’ itself, abbreviating it to ‘LUV’, commenting on the continuously evolving state of language as it responds to contemporary technology.
‘OUI’ Woodcut is a tribute to Harland Miller’s time spent in Paris as a young artist and writer during the 1990s. This print is a part of Miller’s 2021 exhibition ‘The French Letter Paintings’ a continuation from his well-known series ‘Letter Paintings’ of fictional book covers.
