Harland Miller paintings – 8 Originals *SOLD*

 Harland Miller, I Don't Sleep So I Don't Dream So I Don't Wake Up Crying , 2013.The Harland Miller exhibition ‘A Decisive Blow Against If.’ at Other Criteria, launches today Thursday 2 May, 6-8pm and it will run untill Tuesday 11th June. Continuing from his renowned series of paintings based of the dust jackets of Penguin books, Miller combines the style and colour inherent in the Penguin plays and finds a way to marry aspects of Pop Art, abstraction and figurative painting, with his writer’s love of text. The ensuing images are humorous, sardonic and nostalgic at the same time. while the painting style hints at the dog-eared, scuffed covers of Penguin books themselves, giving the feeling of familiarity assonated with a loved book.

Miller says "Because these paintings reference PLAYS, there’s an implied sense of drama in which you read the text, at least I think there is; I’ve always been playing with this idea of the characters in the texts (the characters I’ve made up) having a kind of spectral life behind the painting itself and perhaps the sense of theatricality makes that easier to buy into. The covers are also blown up, which suggests some kind of comment on the content as being perhaps larger than life; as do the color combinations – mine that is, not the original designers, which interestingly seem to have no correlation between the subject and the colour register or kick back you get from it.

Harland Miller, Pipe Down Cunt, 2013.Harland Miller, A Fist to Cry On, 2013.

A lot of the plays that were published in this series were perhaps seen as hard going or dull compared to the more radical drama of the 60’s, so perhaps this was an attempt to make them seem more modern, which could be why some of the titles I’ve used, such as Pipe Down Cunt which might still be unacceptable as a title in the literary world, seem to sit or work well in these pictures.”

There are 8 unique works on paper available at Other Criteria (business stopped)
These works are priced from £19,200 to 21,600. SOLD OUT