The Artist - Lee Anne Miller
A native of Farmington, Utah, Lee Anne Miller is currently living in New York where she works as a painter and printmaker. She is also a Professor of Art at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City.
Miller values her upbringing in the Intermountain West and her exposure to the dramatic and diverse landscapes of the area. With her use of form and color, Miller creates an essece of Utah in her abstract landscape paintings, which are inspired by the beauty of nature. She states that "my primary source of influence and inspiration is the natural, organic, earth-related environment."
Choosing to work with watercolors, she challenges herself to "extend the boundaries of tradition, concept and scale." Miller exerts control over the medium to maintain intensity of color while generating interest in "the presence, personality and immediacy of the process." (Biographical Sketch)
Miller completed her undergraduate work at Utah State University before attending the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where she received her Master of Fine Arts in painting. She then worked in New York as an intaglio printmaker at the Pratt Graphics Art Center before accepting a Fulbright Fellowship for postgraduate study at the prestigious Slade School of Art in London, England. She has held teaching an administrative positions at the Cleveland Institute of Art, East Texas State University, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Wayne State University in Detroit, and the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. She now holds a faculty position at Cooper Union, which allows her to devote time to her studio work.
Over the years, Miller has been presented with a number of research grants, personal honors, and professional awards in recognition of her work, including an Outstanding Alumna Award received in 1987 from Utah State University. In 1996-97, Miler was honored with a three-month exhibition of her work at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art. This exhibition, entitled "Nature Transformed, Paintings by Lee Anne Miller," featured watercolors, oils, and acrylics selected from several of her artistic series (Resume).
The Art
LEE ANNE MILLER (1938- ) Farmington, UT/New York City
Storm Spirits on Horizon #6 1997
watercolor, 22 3/8" x 29 5/8" (57.0 x 75.1 cm)
Gift from the Artist
As an artist, Miller is interested "in nature as observed, transformed and ultimately altered through the process of abstraction." She enriches imagery through this creative process even as she reduces forms to their essential elements.
Lee Anne Miller compares working with watercolors to walking on a tightrope. She states, "It can take a lot of training and anticipation and visualization beforehand, but then you're on and must perform and react to the circumstances. Spontaneity and quick decisions can e made on the spot in order to get the most out of the idea and medium. Every step is visible. The full trail of the aqueous pigment and the process can be seen. And the level of difficulty of the 'high wire' must never be revealed." (Miller, p.1)
While studying in England, Miller absorbed the technical characteristics inherent in major English watercolors and prints. She then used this knowledge to further develop her own artistic style. Like much of her work in the watercolor medium, Storm Spirits on Horizon #6 reflects strong linear qualities enhanced by lush color wash applications. Miller's sensitive handling of the medium is not limited nor undermined by its directness and maniupulation.
The use of overlaping and blending color tones in Storm Spirits on Horizon #6 provides depth and interest to this abstract landscape. The artist's brushstrokes provide form and contour, and give shape to an elusive landscape which is overshadowed by an approaching storm. Not specific to place, the landscape evokes the tensions inherent in the coming clash of sunset and storm and elicits memories of our own experiences, our own landscapes.
Concepts
Visual Art Core Curriculum - Utah State Office of Education
Under the Standards of Media, Structures and Functions, and Subjects, Symbols, and Ideas, this print can help the student:
- Explore a variety of media, techniques, and processes. Create value sketches. Create an abstract landscape painting.
- Use value to create emphasis/contrast. Identify the function of art to create order or design.
- Create an image using abstract or nonobjective subject matter.
Under the Standard of Context, this print can help the student:
- Identify works of the Abstract Expressionist style, particularly artist Helen Frankenthaler.
- Investigate the abstract/concrete aspects in culture and in the individual student's life.
Under the Standard of Evaluation and Criticism, this print can help the student:
- Examine the formalist aesthetic stance in art creation.
- Assess merit of artworks, including prejudgment, personal preference and informed preference.
Under the Standard of Connections, this print can help the student:
- Compare and contrast the use of emphasis in music and visual art.
- Make connections between the characteristics of visual arts within a particular historical period or style with ideas, issues, or themes in geography and/or physical science.
Under the Standard of Portfolios and Exhibitions, this print can help the student:
- Curate an exhibition according to specific criteria approaches or cultures.
© Copyright 2000 Springville Museum of Art
All rights reserved
|
