Opening reception: February 5, 6 – 8 pm

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present new work by Edward Bear Miller. This will be Miller’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Edward Bear Miller’s figurative, gestural, and bold representations of our contemporary surroundings are at once modern and timeless. Rooted in the tradition of plein-air realism, Miller applies his paint rapidly and generously – producing vivid images that portray local landscapes, urban-industrial spaces, and figures in familiar settings.  His most recent works explore the interactions between apparently dichotomous forces, including the industrial and the wild, masculine and feminine, contemporary and historical, subject and object, and even the digital world and analog world.  These pieces become an entanglement of figures, industrial spaces, landscape, and history; encompassing time past, present, and future. Although representational in nature, Miller’s stylistic uses of paint and lyrical compositions also imbue a graceful abstraction to these canvases, thereby provoking the viewer into contemplation.

While based in New Paltz, NY, Edward Bear Miller’s family is deeply rooted in Louisiana and the artist savors the ability to paint in and around New Orleans and Iberia Parish. Inspired by the mystical energies that inflamed the work of Dove, Carr, Hartley, Marin and Bischoff, Miller’s paintings exercise a corporeal presence while describing a figurative and emotional world on the picture plane.