Doretta Miller

The creation of strong illusions of three dimensions through two-dimensional visual techniques has always been a source of fascination for me. Thus my main artistic interest has been to explore how the relationship of lights and darks, as rendered on two-dimensional surfaces, are interpreted by viewers as three-dimensional forms.

Since returning from the Peoples Republic of China in 1996 where I taught Western Style Oil Painting, I have been creating a series of gouache paintings on paper. The subjects of the paintings are people going about their daily activities in the Peoples Republic of China. I seek to call attention to images that are common but rendered as highly refined, thus revealing the unusual in the usual. It is my intention for viewers in our fast-paced society to take a longer time examining the quality of the forms and the gouache techniques used in the paintings. The border serves as a device to integrate visual references from the United States and China. As the viewer identifies visual elements from the inner painting they deconstruct a part of the image and reconstruct it within the context of the border. The elaborate borders in the gouache paintings are a reference to the brocade used by Chinese artists for traditional scroll paintings.

See also:
Skidmore web site
Oakroom Artists
Email: dmiller@skidmore.edu