JOHN M. MILLER

After an epiphany in the early 1970s prompted him to abandon figurative painting, Miller established his painting practice by stripping art down to its essence. This took the form of angled rectangular bars repeated across the picture plane. He went on to paint these bars —in shades of white, black, blue, violet, red, yellow, and green acrylic on unprimed canvases, ranging
in scale from intimate to encompassing—for over 40 years. As Christopher Knight put it, “if it sounds simplistic or repetitive—well, you’ve probably never seen his paintings.” The signature bars make Miller’s paintings readily identifiable, yet they are impossible to absorb in a single glance. His work requires and rewards viewers’ slow attention, which allows the eye to perceive a sense of rhythmic movement in the interplay of the bars. As David Pagel describes them, “given some time, attentiveness, and concentration, [Miller’s] initially overstimulating, seemingly cacophonous combinations of evenly measured rows and gradually slanted columns... come to rest, and carry viewers through the invisible, unapproachable threshold that divides superficial excitability from something like deep serenity.”

His work is included in many permanent collections across the country including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Creative Artists Agency, Beverly Hills, CA; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, Los Angeles, CA; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Art, San Diego, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA and San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA.