Miller, Melanie

A soul born of Africa, now domiciled in Australia, together with use of vibrant colour, varied textures and mixed media juxtapose to present a unique talent, that is, Melanie Miller. In your face, powerful, abstract images encapsulate her fresh and unusual Afro – Australasian perspective of her environment.

Melanie’s motivations are influenced by her youth, living on the shores of the Indian Ocean watching the African sun casting its long shadows using the ocean as a canvas. Influences and background are a large part of what makes Melanie’s work exceptional. It is the tapestry of Egypt in her mother, Russian in her father and a youth at one with sea and sky in Muizenberg Cape Town that is woven into her work.

Melanie Miller is a South African born artist now living in Sydney. She studied at the Cape Town Technical College obtaining a diploma in Art. After four years of painting on fabric, Melanie decided to change to the medium of canvas, where she felt immediately at home. She found that she was able to express herself more freely and creating expressionistic, colorful works of art, exploring the niche field of textures and three-dimensional imagery, including interweaving of geometrical reflective shadows.
By using bright colours, she has managed to highlight and explore chosen areas of the canvas keeping the balance in background mode, resulting in a vibrant abstract journey into her past or even present thinking. Her broad brush strokes using thickened textures, are influenced by her innermost sensuality, allowing her to push the window of opportunity of textures to its boundaries. Her colours are basically primary but worked onto the canvas in a unique manner creating vibrant 3-D imagery and finished in a powerful textured finish.
In her latest works which she is exhibiting, she employs an amazing blend of reds and autumn colours resulting in a vividly graphic portrayal of the outback.
Being an artist, one faces constant challenges of change and understanding, this is evident as the artist becomes more of an extension of the canvas.

“I paint large pictures because not only is it grandiose, but I want to be intimate and human. To paint small pictures is to place oneself outside of one’s experience, however, large pictures allow the artist to become part of that canvas”.

My perspective of capturing a scene changes as my work matures and, I will be viewing my subject scene artistically but with differing inspirations, through my various phases of life.

Private Collections:
USA – New York, Italy, Australia, South Africa