This Artist Takes Dreamily Distorted Still Lifes of Clay Sculptures

Brian Everett Miller blurs the line between order and chaos in his multimedia works.

by Giaco Furino

April 23, 2016, 5:00pm

Permanent Midnight by Brian Everett Miller. Image courtesy of the artist

Wide-eyed figurative charcoals, precise still life photography, and… morphing, chaotic masses of human flesh? This is the dichotomy present in the work of Pittsburgh-born, D.C./West Virginia-based multimedia artist Brian Everett Miller. As his portfolio of work grows and slides deeper into multimedia and narrative abstraction, Miller spoke to The Creators Project on how he first got into making figurative art and his thoughts on the various mediums he employs to build his frantic, frenetic pieces.

Miller started out as a still life photographer working with flowers, but wanted to get into figurative art. “It didn’t seem as if there was anything that could be done with the figure in still life photography,” explains Miller. “Then I saw the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto and the series he did in which he photographed historical figures made of wax. Seeing his work gave me the idea that I didn’t need a live subject to represent a live subject. That's when I began to think about using sculpture as a way of creating the subject for still life portraits. My first series of portraits were done in this way— sculpting the figures from clay, painting, and then photographing them.” Now Miller uses a wide array of mediums, but he often comes back to this sculpt-paint-photograph technique.

Figures in Millers work are heavily distorted and obfuscated. “In the earlier portraits when I was photographing sculpture, this type of distortion was out of necessity. I found that I could not directly represent the sculpture as I had made it because it was not the sculpture in and of itself that I was ultimately seeking to represent.” Within this distortion, Miller pushes for a balance between deliberance and chaos. “I want the application of the mark itself, how I lay it down, to be as completely random as possible. I always find it more interesting to suggest something in this way rather than to make it clear with a more illustrative hand. The distortions begin to build up and become a shorthand way of describing the interior world and mental state of the subject.”

Miller approaches his work without preconceptions, he says. “I may begin with one idea for an image but as I work toward it, the way in which I apply the medium may suggest something different and this is something I don't fight against. It's not that I can't draw or paint what I'd like to more traditionally, it's just that I find it less exciting.” And this excitement carries through the work: “So much of my work is predicated upon this exploration of chance and so there are constant surprises— these moments are what makes it so exciting and keeps me continually working. Every brushstroke or mark is loaded with the potential to either advance the piece or regress it. Deciding what works and doesn't work and what direction to go in is completely subjective and based solely upon my best judgement at the time— I often don't get it right.”

And now, Miller’s is starting to make narrative works, “I am moving toward creating larger environments filled with more characters where I can create a deeper narrative— I feel like I want something going on in my pictures now and I want to say something with my work beyond what a portrait can convey - I want to tell a story.” And perhaps, in those stories, Miller will find that perfect, tenuous balance between abstraction, narrative, surprise, and suspense.