"Seated Figure Red, White and Blue" (oil on canvas) 20" x 26"

Glen graduated from East Tennessee State University with a B.F.A. and continued his art studies at the University of South Florida, receiving his M.A.   He has been teaching art since 1979, primarily in secondary schools and from 1984-1988 at Newberry College. Glen currently teaches part time at the Greenville County Museum of Art and Greenville Technical College, Greenville, S.C.

"As an art teacher for more than twenty years, I came to value the choices students made as much by human spirit as by learned responses.  There is something magical about a bunch of marks and colors coming together in a unique way to create a credible image.  I came to appreciate the significance of each mark, each underlined area, each color shift as an assertion of the process, having its own character even as it defines the larger image.  I try to approach my work in such a way that the finished piece will reflect much of this magical process."

 

"A lot of the imagery in my work is taken from my own history and experience.  I draw from my Appalachian roots, playing music, parenting, years of observation, and always questioning.  I choose to present the images using techniques that challenge both me and the viewer to remember that it is a drawing or a painting, an interaction between illusion and surface.  I enjoy the magic of seeing an image become credible in spite of the marking or brushing process.  I find many parallels in real life experiences.

"Some of the figures in this work are purely fictional.  These fictional characters are derived from many thumbnail sketches and gradually evolve into story tellers themselves.  Sometimes the evolving figures will suggest the narrative or context for the finished piece.  I prefer to see the characters not as recreations of observed reality but as images recalled or imagined.  When I am working from a model, I let character overrule the accuracy, and I prefer the color have an expressive role in the work.

"I am always intrigued by how much is revealed in the silence of a drawing or painting.  If I am successful with the work, these elements become merely passages that allow the viewer to engage in a personal dialogue with the work, finding tangents that connect to their own experience.

                                                "Figuratively Thinking"     Glen Miller,  2006

 

Work by Glen Miller...

 

 

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