ARTIST EMILY MARIE MILLER
I currently live and work in a small Hamlet in the Hudson Valley. Before the pandemic, I lived in Brooklyn for 5 years, and I’m eager to get back to New York City. The experience of seeing artworks in person vs online or in print was a huge turning point in my life and in my work, and after much practice and experimentation, I landed my first big group show, Seed, curated by Yvonne Force, at Paul Kasmin Gallery in 2018. The following year, I had my first New York solo show at Barney Savage Gallery in Tribeca, and in 2020 I had my first international solo show at Unit London. This year I became a part of the roster at Monya Rowe Gallery, and exhibited my first solo show with the gallery this past April. I love being an artist, and I’m forever grateful for the opportunity to make a living from a practice that feels so full of purpose.
Tell us about your greatest inspirations or influences?
A huge source of inspiration is myth, folktales, and storytelling. Growing up, I didn’t have much exposure to art or painting, but I did have illustrated books of Greek myths and Disney princess films which shaped my world. As an adult, I’m still mesmerized by film adaptations of folklore such as Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, and Demy’s Donkey Skin. In short - I love stories, expressed through words, film, ballet, song, etc. Astrology & Tarot are also major influences in my work, with each planet or card representing an archetype in concert with many other archetypes.
My first brush with contemporary art was in college as a Sculpture major. Pippilotti Rist’s immersive installations were a huge source of inspiration in school. I love Louise Bourgeois equally for her work & her very personal writing. At art museums, I gravitate towards Northern Renaissance Painting - Jan Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece & Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights are probably my two favorite paintings of all time.
Tell us about your creative process
My creative process is a cycle that ebbs and flows. To begin, I take downtime to read, think, and absorb. When I feel ready, I start to make small, rough drawings in a sketchbook. Drawing from the small sketches, I begin composing works on large paper with charcoal or graphite. Once the compositions are worked out, I make small works on panel, then scale up to work the same composition on a larger stretched canvas. The paintings each have about 3-5 layers. I work in batches, rotating between works. They all are finished around the same time. Towards the end of the cycle is my favorite time to work. You know exactly what the paintings are going to look like, and every day in the studio you are chipping away at the marble (so to speak) to reveal the final form.
How has the pandemic affected your creativity and how do you see the world change as we move forward?
The pandemic brought me upstate to be closer to my partner Jake’s family. Dramatically cutting back on social time was at times devastating, but it also provided time for reflection. It was probably easier to be a painter/visual artist with a studio practice in the pandemic than any other type of artist or performer. I’m very happy with how my solo show with Monya Rowe Gallery turned out. Those works were a turning point, certainly made possible through the experience of the pandemic.
The world is changing rapidly - it is truly a wild time to be alive. Americans are reckoning with the horrors on which our idealistic republic was built: slavery and genocide, a starkly divided populace, and the breakdown of our country’s infrastructure: material, social, and otherwise. This summer in upstate New York, where we expect to be insulated from the effects of climate change, we were subjected to weeks-long, crop-ruining, rains, and severely polluted air from wildfires on the West Coast & Canada. It has become clear that we all are in the thick of it. I believe artists have their part to play in the symphony that is our humanity.
Artists are in the unique position to express our collective hopes & fears in this new era of uncertainty, albeit through a more diffuse form of communication, the visual image.
Icons in your opinion?
I mean…Beyoncé, Britney. I do wonder if the nature of being an icon in our society is changing. People in the public eye, now more than ever, are being fully audited. Maybe it would be better if we didn’t give people (who are by nature fallible) the status & power of Gods?
What does wellbeing mean to you?
Well-being to me means living in accordance with my most authentic self, which is in communication with the rest of the world. I will always be mining the depths to understand who I am at the core, who I actually am. There’s a lot of de-programming that needs to be done. I’m trying to become more grounded and stable. I have problems with over-indulging. Astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo once said that the archetype for Pluto is a “trash can addict” and that is something I relate to.
Well-being has come to mean tempering these obsessive impulses. Some practices I use are breathing with intention each evening, movement/stretching with breath awareness each morning, and my studio practice.
Anything else you’d like to share?
I want to live to be 100 years old.
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Visuals Courtesy of artist and Monya Rowe Gallery
