Nick Miller
Truckscapes
Drawings from a mobile studio 1998-2007
January 17th – February 24th 2008
Carnegie Building
Pery Square
Limerick, Ireland
T: +353 (0)61 310633
artgallery [at] limerickcity.ie
Limerick City Gallery of Art is delighted to present a major exhibition by Nick Miller. Truckscapes, Drawings from a mobile studio – a series of large-scale ink drawings made over the last ten years that directly engage the landscape. ‘Miller’s prickly, symphonic rectangles of line, tone and surface are startlingly, visually alive. And the soulful resonance of his portraits of place arises ever so naturally from them’.* LCGA is the Irish venue for the exhibition which was first shown at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris in September/October 2007.
Nick Miller is an artist who has moved with dexterity and conviction between Portraiture, Still Life, Landscape and The Figure. He has refined the focus of his interest working directly in the presence of his subject, keeping the process animated and charged by a continual confrontation with ‘real presence’. His work has a unique intensity of vision and realization that continues to challenge expectations of being in, seeing and painting the world. While working from the foundation of tradition in painting and drawing, he continues to revitalize those traditions into something contemporary and timeless.
In 1997 he began working from the back of a mobile studio – a converted truck: painting the land around his home in Co. Sligo. This mobile studio makes possible a direct engagement with ‘Landscape’ as a subject. The truck doors open to nature in a full frontal assault. It has allowed a merging of an enclosed ‘culture of the studio’ with the thrill and immediacy of ‘Plein Air’ painting.
Since the beginning of his unusual “Truckscape” project, Miller has worked on large-scale black ink drawings made on heavy-duty paper that is scored and redrawn both with brush and power tools. The result is a series of intense, highly worked, mostly black and white images that are a homage, both to the landscape and to the vehicular studio from which they are drawn and seen. Drawing and painting hold equal measure in his work and these are not preparatory sketches. They are, more often than not, made in the aftermath of a painting of the same subject.
To coincide with the exhibition Rubicon Gallery has published Truckscapes, Drawings from a mobile studio, a book which documenting the project, and including an insightful essay by Peter Plagens, a New York based critic, artist and contributing editor at Newsweek and Artforum. Miller will also present a parallel project at Rubicon Gallery Dublin, 19th January – 15th February, showing the first new works, marking his recent move to his new studio at the foot of Ben Bulben.
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*Peter Plagens Nick Miller: Drawing Life from Landscape.
Biographical Note:
Born in London in 1962, Nick Miller moved to Ireland in 1984 and now lives in Co. Sligo. He has exhibited in Ireland, Britain, the US and Netherlands, including solo shows at IMMA and the RHA. His works are included in major public and private collections in Ireland, Europe and Asia. He is a member of Aosdána. Nick Miller is represented by Rubicon Gallery www.rubicongallery.ie T: +353 (0)1 6708055
Admission is FREE
Limerick City Gallery of Art, Carnegie Building, Pery Square, Limerick, Ireland.
For further information go to www.limerickcity.ie/LCGA T: +353 (0)61 310633 or contact artgallery@limerickcity.ie
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 10-6pm; Thurs 10-7pm; Sat 10-5pm; Sun 2-5pm.
Closed Bank Holidays.
Limerick City Gallery of Art is part of Limerick City Council and is supported by The Arts Council, The Heritage Council, Fáilte Ireland and Fás.