Michael Paul Miller

"Steeple"
2013 - Oil on Canvas - 24 x 20

"Wake"
2013 - Oil on Canvas - 47 x 72

"Wave"
2012 - Oil on Canvas - 30 x 24

"With Teeth (elder no. 1)"
2011 - Oil on Canvas - 8 x 8

"With Teeth" (gridded 16)
Oil on Canvas - 8 x 8 each

Michael Paul Miller is an artist of the times, obsessed with the dark side of human nature and existence, depicting in detailed fascination images of destruction and chaos, both literal and allegorical. Our culture has embraced post-apocalyptic imagery like never before, not because we believe some sudden cataclysmic event is imminent but because we suspect that we are living within such an event even now, and it is us. The imagery provided by this obsession is about how we exist in such a world, what it means to survive when the very nature of survival is changing. And, of course, there is the constant reminder that we may not. The "Momento Mori" tradition in western art (literally, "remember you will die") goes straight back to the classical era of ancient Greece and Rome but it takes on a new urgency when the implications of it are not just for us as individuals, but also for us as a species. In the face of certain mortality however, we still manage to find beauty, and in even in the grimmest depictions of disaster there is something in the human spirit that responds with a visceral thrill. This strange contradictory nature of our being is the heart of what Michael Paul Miller is attempting to get at. Looking back through the work on his website you can see that it has evolved, developing and distilling his ideas and dark obsessions into works of stark and disturbing beauty.
You can see more at his website: www.mpmart.net
His work can be seen in person in Portland, Oregon at Laura Russo Gallery
or in New York city at Denise Bibro Fine Art
He currently has work on display at the Fairbanks Gallery on the campus of Oregon State University