Tracy Miller (born 1966) is an American painter. Her large-scale still life paintings of food have been included in more than ten solo shows and more than seventy group shows throughout the United States since 1992. In 2013 her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the

American University Museum The American University Museum is located within the Katzen Arts Center at the American University in Washington, DC. History and description The American University Museum consists of a three-story, museum and sculpture garden. The region’ ...

and was accompanied by a catalog published by Feature Inc. She was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2014. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Early life and education

Miller was born in

Storm Lake, IA Storm Lake is a city in Buena Vista County, Iowa, United States. The population was 11,269 in the 2020 census, an increase from 10,076 in the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Buena Vista County. Storm Lake is home to Buena Vista Universi ...

She studied at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 coll ...

(BFA 1989), the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 t ...

(ME 1992), and the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

(MFA 1993).

Work

Miller is best known for her exuberant still life paintings of food that utilize a “vast array of techniques, including a sign painter’s folk realism, a loose, sketchy cartoonist’s stroke, and a Pollock drip” that come together in “chaotic buffets in oil." Miller paints what she calls, “piles of guilty pleasure” and her work has been described as a “vibrating cacophony of heady color.” A May 2004 review in ''

Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It ...

'' stated, “Miller’s paintings teem with as much activity and information as it seems they can bear, deliberately flirting with surfeit. Painterly abstraction is at least as integral to these works as their still-life components are, and their dizzying visual generosity underlines the symbiotic relationship between food and paint, and the inherently sustaining nature of both.” Her influences include

Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and e ...

Florine Stettheimer Florine Stettheimer (August 19, 1871 – May 11, 1944) was an American modernist painter, feminist, theatrical designer, poet, and salonnière. Stettheimer developed a feminine, theatrical painting style depicting her friends, family, and exp ...

, Cézanne,

van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

and

Fairfield Porter Fairfield Porter (June 10, 1907 – September 18, 1975) was an American painter and art critic. He was the fourth of five children of James Porter, an architect, and Ruth Furness Porter, a poet from a literary family. He was the brother of photo ...

Collections

Miller’s work is in the collections of the

at the Katzen Arts Center, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art,

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...

, the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowships to professionals who have demonstrated exceptional ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

, SEI/West Family Collection, and the Sioux City Art Center.

Reviews and commentary

“There’s a sensuality in Miller’s work that is at times breathtaking, and thus a painting of a simple row of doughnuts provokes a visceral, joyful response that’s not easily forgotten.” —Kristin Iversen, ''Brooklyn Magazine'' “Subtly situating her goodies among raucous candy-colored dabs of luscious paint, Miller strikes an unlikely balance among Technicolor Pop consumerist extravaganza, messy all-over abstraction, and sumptuous Old Master still life. If her beloved beer cans and bonbons appear lighthearted, her well-conceived compositions never fail to convey her seriousness as a painter.” —Meredith Mendelsohn, ''Art + Auction'' "Tracy Miller emerges as a kind of Huysmanian painter of contemporary life. She makes paintings that flirt with conventions of landscape, still-life, abstraction, and representation, but refuse the autonomy of any one of them—sampling at will and combining with unexpected alchemical results. She fills the canvas much in the way Huysman fills a room: with paradoxically united elements, raging alcholates that threaten to overwhelm, to subsume, to tip into the noxious, and which offer sensations more extreme than any that come to us purely by way of nature. There is a frantic, concentrated pleasure here, one that hints at the neurotic monstrousness produced by so many consumable goods. Yet the poker-faced humor of Miller’s works, packed as they are with fish and donuts and hotdogs and bananas and pie (so many potential allusions to ever-more guilty pleasures), render the works complicated and ambivalent—at once clamorous and mute." —Johanna Burton, ''Feature Inc'' “Canvases brimming with colors, animals, flowers and comestible items like pineapple upside-down cake seem like convergences of fantasies through paint.” —''TimeOut New York''

Awards and honors

Miller has received numerous awards, including a

, three

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...

Awards, an Elizabeth Foundation Award, a Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Grant, and an

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headq ...

purchase prize.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, Tracy 1966 births 21st-century American painters University of Iowa alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Living people 21st-century American women painters