Melissa Miller (artist)
Melissa Miller (born 1951) is an American painter who is best known for what Art in America called "raucous allegorical paintings"[1] of animals that balance storytelling, psychological insight and behavioral observation with technical virtuosity and formal rigor.
[35][24][34] Miller's tableaux depict realistic yet subtly anthropomorphized animals in dramas that range from alarming to fantastical or wry and comment allegorically on wildlife (predator and prey, adaptation, survival, climate and ecological threat) and shared human themes (emotions, fears, interaction, displacement).
[25][30] Miller’s figurative paintings and drawings of the later 1970s arose out of her affinity for rural Texas and New Mexico environments and behavioral observation, and often portrayed lively, high-colored, seemingly ordinary farm vignettes (barnyard scenes, picnics) featuring both animals and people.
[11][2] These animals interacted with humanoids and mythological or fictional characters (angels, demons, spirits) in fantastical scenarios inspired by Eastern and Western folk tales (e.g., Aesop's Crow, 1985)[18] that emphasized a psychological focus on inner states and existential dilemmas rather than external observation.
[2][25][38] Representative, allegorical works of this period include Broken Wing (1986), New Skin (1988), Decision (1991) and Night Sky (1995), which respectively depict mortal crisis, spontaneous metamorphosis, a phantasmagorical procession of creatures, and flight in the midst of environmental catastrophe.
[4][38][36][39] Reacting to disappearing natural habitats and the increasing number of imported species that she observed in Texas and the Southwest, Miller shifted from fantastical and mythic scenes to tableaux combining farm and exotic animals in her paintings and drawings of the early 2000s.
[1][43][37] This work often employed rigorously structured, frieze-like compositions of flattened landscapes rather than illusionistic space, which reviewers compared to Japanese screens and Persian miniatures, Giorgio Morandi still lifes, and pre-Renaissance groupings of people.
