Lavely Miller
“LAVELY MILLER paints figures that exist in moments of emotional action. This sense of movement is translated through transparent layers of glazes,
sometimes upward of 100 separate applications of color are combined to create the final surface. The quality of layering is heightened by the use of paper, as it moves and crinkles during its application to create physical depth. Classical Flemish glazing techniques - unusually applied almost exclusively with the artist’s right index finger - and the aged appearance of the painted surface give these figures a timeless quality, a frozen moment of physical time filled with universal human emotion.”
- Art Martin, Muskegon Museum of Art
Miller’s work contains depths that are “both metaphorical and literal. That the format evokes Renaissance art seems apt...her paintings have an eerie timelessness.”
- Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
Lavely Miller was named one of ten finalists for the 2021 Bennett Prize, the largest visual arts award given to a female figurative realist in the United States. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Maryland State Arts, and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. She is a past recipient of the Keller Prize, the Contemporary Award from Contemporary Paintings, the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, and a Juror’s Choice awardee from the National Museum of American History/Smithsonian Institution. Miller has had residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Dacia Gallery in New York City, where she studied under Iliya Mirochnick. Her work is regularly exhibited at the LA Art Show through Arcadia Contemporary.
Lavely Miller’s paintings have been featured in American Art Collector, Hyperallergic, Fine Art Connoisseur, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, the Washington Post, and other publications internationally. Her work is held in various public collections such as the New Salem Museum in New Salem, Massachusetts, the University of Virginia, the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington, DC, and the Twenty-First Century Fox and News Corporation Building in New York City. Her work is internationally privately collected.
Miller graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in Studio Art from James Madison University. She holds both master's and doctoral-level degrees in Clinical Mental Health from the University of Virginia, where she completed her residency in the area of serious mental illness.
Lavely Miller currently lives and works on the eastern shore of Maryland.
IG @lavelymiller