Holly Miller

About

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. Education Born in Buffalo, NY, the artist grew up in Rome, Italy in the late 60's and early 70's. Her grandmother, who used to come visit Holly and her family once in a while, would always take her to the museums to explore different masterpieces. During her high school years in NY, she had only one dream - to move back to the town where she spent her childhood. After graduation, the artist relocated to the Eternal City and took classes in History of Art and Italian literature at the Dante Alighieri school. Aged twenty, the young artist moved back to the US to study drawing, painting and sculpture at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) where she obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts in the year of 1984. Technique After a long journey of experimenting, the artist started getting involved with thread - a material that has properties of drawing yet is tactile and sculptural, that relates to canvas and carries endless metaphors. She began drawing with a long needle and thread instead of a pencil on canvas. She found a visual medium that combined drawing, painting and sculpture and yet remained simple and humble. She had achieved an economy that was reached through many years of exploring, taking risks, discovering and then discarding what wasn't absolutely necessary. By distilling her experiences, thoughts, feelings and emotions, she has created an abstract personal language that has become the essence of her work. ... "The act of stitching lines carries metaphors of puncturing and healing, connecting and disrupting, tearing and mending. The tiny pricks or stings remind us that everything that is beautiful or gentle can be slightly painful too. There lies the poetry in the work." By combining repeated threaded lines with geometric shapes of color, her work conveys many dichotomies: reductive painting