Our Featured Artist to start 2023 is Joseph A. Miller. His work is intriguing and invites the viewer to explore the narratives behind his work.

Joseph A. Miller is an Associate Professor of Art at S.U.N.Y. Buffalo State University, where he has taught drawing and painting since 1997. He earned a B.F.A. degree from Kutztown University, Pennsylvania in 1990 and an M.F.A. degree in painting and drawing from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1993. Before being offered the teaching position at Buffalo State College Joseph worked at The Philadelphia Museum of Art in both the security and art conservation departments.

Miller’s work is in numerous public and private collections, and has been shown internationally in Finland, China, Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as across the United States, from Berkeley, California to Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work has been exhibited at the Arnot Art Museum, the Castellani Art Museum and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in New York, the Allentown Art Museum, the Woodmere Art Museum, the Erie Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and the Springville Museum of Art in Utah. He has earned numerous awards, including a First Place Award in A.D. Gallery’s Art in Times of Anxiety National Exhibition, at Pembroke, NC, a Purchase Award and a People’s Choice Award at the Royal Nebeker Gallery, in Clatsop Community College’s, Au Naturel: The Nude in The 21st Century International Exhibition, in Astoria Oregon, a First Place Award in Manifest Creative Research Gallery’s International Drawing Annual V, in Cincinnati Ohio, a Best in Show Award in the National Drawing and Painting Exhibition at the Lore Degenstein Gallery at Susquehanna University, Pennsylvania, and two Purchase Awards from Wright State University Art Galleries in Dayton, Ohio. Joseph has given lectures about his work at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Daemen College, New York, Southern Utah University, The University of Utah, Utah State University and at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York. His work is represented by the Art Dialogue Gallery in Buffalo, NY, Meibohm Fine Art in East Arora, NY and the West End Gallery in Corning, NY.

Artist Statement

I focus primarily on the human figure depicted in environments that create a context for psychologically charged open ended narratives. Many of these narratives explore ideas about power and vulnerability.

Quality of light is a common theme. In particular, the way in which atmospheric light and locale can suggest a sense of mystery and silence. These works are dark, humid and hopefully, at their best, memorable. For me, the most successful are those that evoke the feeling that an event is about to happen or has recently happened.

Images of figures or figures in landscapes, in groups or in isolation, share a common feeling of significance. Wholly absorbed within themselves or the dialogue shared between one another, they wait for the unfolding of their private story.

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Her intriguing work expresses much depth, mystery and emotion. Utilizing photography, mixed media, installation and sculpture, her work captures a moment in time.

Lana Eileen is a musician, photographer and visual artist. Her artwork fuses abstract elements with fine details, combining seemingly disparate fragments to evoke a sense of magic realism. She utilities a variety of different mediums, from photography and painting to installation art and sculpture.

In 2019, Lana undertook an artist residency in remote Iceland. She was also an artist-in-residence on the island of Hrísey near the Arctic Circle in 2021, before participating in a residency in Egypt in 2022, furthering her research into the influence of mythology on contemporary art.

As a musician, Lana has traveled extensively, touring and recording internationally in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom. She recorded her upcoming album with Brett Shaw (Florence and the Machine, Robyn, Daughter) at his London studio in 2021.

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February 20, 1897 – November 18, 1983
Magic Realism

One of his most famous paintings, That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door), is known to be his paramount work which took him ten years to complete.

The painting reflects on the regrets in life.

It is said that he meticulously executed every detail using a paint brush of a single hair. He would often finish no more than a quarter of a square inch a day.

A wrinkled, aging woman’s hand rests on the carved doorway, a faded blue handkerchief clenched between the fingers. The poignant placement of the hand, near but not touching the doorknob, only underscores the sense of remorse and mourning implied by the painting.

Albrights style focused on themes of death, life, the material and the spirit, and the effects of time. This style of art was defined as Magic Realism and described as “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.”

Albright was labeled by early critics as “the painter of horrors” and the “specialist in the repulsive”. However he was a deliberate painter who attempted to put his realistic technique in the service of essentially philosophical concerns.

The Vermonte
“Make [the head] great; eye sockets that tell the years, folds that bespeak flesh, eyes that bring pity … that have seen better.” – from Ivan Albright’s notes on his painting “The Vermonter”.

Dorian Gray
Another one of his famous paintings was the Picture of Dorian Gray painted in 1943/44. Ivan Albright painted this lurid portrait for the Oscar-winning movie adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wilde’s tale, Dorian Gray commissions a portrait of himself as an attractive young man and later trades his soul for an ever-youthful appearance.

Self Portraits
Most known for his self portraits, he made over twenty self-portraits in his last three years, even on his deathbed, drawing the final ones after a stroke.
He died in 1983 at 86 years old.

Today, Ivan Albright’s creations can be seen at art museums in Illinois, New Hampshire, New York City, Washington D.C., and Britain.

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