John Miller, Artist
Untitled
, 1990
Medium
Styrofoam, found objects, plaster, papier-mâché, acrylic on Masonite
Dimensions
60 x 48 x 14 in. (152.4 x 121.9 x 35.6 cm)
Credit Line
Courtesy of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Image courtesy of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts
John Miller is perhaps most recognized for a series of brown relief paintings that he began to make in the mid-1980s. Built up from a thick impasto, many of these paintings are a chocolaty, fecal mess of inchoate mounds, formed from objects buried just below the surface. In this untitled relief, chunks, wedges, and balls adhere like growths to the canvas. Miller used the thickened paint to form intentional, self-conscious brushstrokes that simultaneously enact and function as a caricature for the creative process in allegories of neo-expressionism.