Biography of Harland Miller
Harland Miller is a rare breed of artist capable of achieving excellence in the fields of writing and fine art. He first came to prominence at the turn of the millennium with his novel Slow down Arthur, Stick to Thirty, the story of a boy travelling around Northern England with a David Bowie Impersonator. It was not until 2001 that Miller struck upon a painting motif that turned canvases into Penguin Book Covers, allowing him to combine his keen interest in books and painting. The titles featured on the invented covers often refer to literary classics and can be witty, nostalgic and even melancholic. More recently Miller has extended his designs to incorporate geometrical covers of psychology books from the 1960s, an “era when positive messaging often masked societal neurosis.”
Born in Yorkshire in 1964, Harland Miller studied at the Chelsea School of Art and graduated in 1988. He has lived in New York, New Orleans and Berlin and London and continues to travel widely. His work is always marked by its powerful use of language and self-referential humor, often drawing attention to the gulfs that exist between representation and reality.
Harland Miller has had numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, most notable at the ICA in London in 1996, the Kunsthalle Mannheim in Germany in 2004, and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England in 2009. His limited edition art prints are popular and in demand around the world.
