Q&A with Greg Miller at Scream by Laura Liliyana-Raffaella Cogoni
What is the premise for your work?
I am an abstract story teller using painting as my medium.
Is it possible for a person to summarise themselves?
Every time I read what I say about myself I sound so damn pretentious. So I’m an artist. It’s what I do.
Tell me more about the inspiration for this series.
Drawing from the diverse cultural and geographic make-up of my American roots, I explore the relationship with the space I inhabit to communicate a particular urban experience.
Working with both paint and collage, I construct and deconstruct, exploring the contradiction, ambiguity and truth between urban street scape and history.
My abstracted backgrounds of drips, patterns, and phrases and the peeling back of layers provide a study in the impermanence of the things that surround us.
My large-scale paintings and installations aim to make the most fleeting parts of American culture tangible.
They grab us nostalgically, rousing us to enjoy the momentary beauty found in the impermanent parts of our lives.
There is a fragile heroism conveyed within the temporary nature of it all, especially within his construction of paper, wood and natural materials, that gives my work liveliness and depth.
What is your artistic outlook on life?
It’s a great time to be alive. I need to paint about it.
How do you research what you do?
They’re collected things from photography, old magazines, history books, movies, paper match books – then I make them come alive.
There are so many layers on each piece, is there a narrative with every layer?
Yes, I paint paintings on top of paintings…these are stories on top of stories.
I read that you believe everything turns out best for protagonists and everyone except villains. Everyone rides off into the sunset.
Its hard to tell the good guys from the bad.
Why choose to document the disappearing cultural landscape of America?
This is part of my history, it’s who i am.
What’s your most embarrassing moment?
Painting in front of people in a bar in west hollywood to raise money for a cause.
What could you not do without?
My better half — Barb, friends and scotch.
Words – Laura Liliyana-Raffaella Cogoni
Photographs - Courtesy Scream
Copyright – Greg Miller
Greg Miller ’Four Corners’ – 30th November 2012 – 5th January 2013 SCREAM, 27-28 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8DH www.screamlondon.com
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