Holly Miller

Bend 14

2014

Bend 14 (Abstract Painting) Acrylic, graphite and thread on canvas - Unframed The threaded lines suggest a physical barrier that interrupts the shapes and stops them from connecting and at the same time a transparency is created that allows the viewer to enter through the lines onto the painted surface. The titles of each series can be interpreted as emotional, psychological and physical conditions. This work from the series called Bend is a zig zag fragmented shape with a stitched edge that amplifies its 3 dimensional aspect. The optical effect is sculptural. There is a constant play between drawing, painting and sculpture. The painting has a dynamic energy and yet simultaneously convey a quiet poetry. Holly Miller is an American abstract artist whose paintings strive to merge the optical with the tactile through the language of abstraction. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Communication through the touch (body language) has inspired her tactile abstract paintings. Miller's palette echoes the tones and hues of Italian industrial design from the 60's and 70's, while her shapes recall architecture and urban structures. Her work has a huge affinity to Fontana's physical approach to his paintings and Burri's tactile manipulation of the painting's surface. Ellsworth Kelly's bold shapes and colors have resonated with her on a purely optical level. Agnes Martin’s subtle, quiet, repetitive drawn lines, Fred Sandback’s strong architectural, minimal fiber lines drawn in space, Eva Hesse’s emotionally loaded structured webs, Richard Tuttle’s quirky and fresh drawings and humble objects, Bridget Riley's dynamic, optical compositions have left a deep impression on Miller inspiring her to carve out her own voice in Abstraction. By combining repeated threaded lines with geometric shapes of color, her work conveys many dichotomies: reductive painting and craft, illusion and material, warm and cool, absence and presence, masculine and feminine, bold and subtle, perfection and imperfection... The paintings have a physicality that is described through the monochromatic brush strokes and the punctured holes of the drawn lines that pierce the surface of the canvas, yet from a distance, they appear to be flat and suggest a fine line drawing...

Acrylic, graphite and thread on canvas - Unframed The threaded lines suggest a physical barrier that interrupts the shapes and stops them from connecting and at the same time a tran...

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