Artist Statement

EDWARD BEAR MILLER currently lives and works in Tarrytown, New York. The artist grew up in the District of Columbia, and earned a B.A. in History from Reed College in 1993. He apprenticed under Pacific Northwest sculptor Philip McCracken before embarking on a twelve-year career as a social studies teacher, including five years in Quito, Ecuador. In 2009 he quit teaching to focus on painting, completing his MFA at SUNY New Paltz in 2015. Miller has participated in numerous shows in DC, NYC, New Orleans, and in the Adirondacks. Recently he has been working on a series of flag paintings, entitled “Aids to Contemplation of the Republic,” which has shown at the Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn and other New York locations. 

The artist states: “We humans live life pushed and pulled by nature and culture, our minds formed by historical ideals and realities. As I navigate the infrastructure of the civilized, industrial world, I’m suppressing wild longings for the freedom of the hills and the thrill of swimming out past the breakers. This feral feeling of being simultaneously inside and outside, attached and unattached, profoundly concerned but resigned to oblivion…It’s what mixes and moves the oil paint on my palette and canvasses, much as it did for Courbet, Bellows, and Marin. Oil paint is the stardust mush of human expression.”