Kate Gilbert Miller Statement

My work is a visual account of my everyday experiences – a narration of the mundane and sublime in each day and how these seemingly varied experiences exhibit nature's transformative, restorative and live-giving forces.

My work uses the human mind as a centerpiece and references neuroscience, meditation and the remapping of brain circuitry. Subjects draw directly from my cognitive life while my abstract imagery references fragments of indecipherable characters and letters, as well as the natural world of aquatic organisms.

As I work, I try to tap into a state of flow and decipher something not immediately known. A secret alphabet may appear from the swoosh of a gesture line, or the shape of a human heart might be suggested by a crevice in a sea sponge.

I enjoy working with mediums that are difficult to control – watery inks pooled on paper or film, thinned oils, and human hair on paper – and allowing the mediums to come to life and exhibit their own natural properties, thus diminishing my power over the outcome. Working in this manner is like redefining how one interprets the world through cognitive remapping practices, such as meditation. The immediacy of finding a solution, or controlling the situation, seems to fade away and the richness of the details takes hold of the mind.

- Kate Gilbert Miller

(Click here to read more about the Dénouement/Indéterminé Series.)
(Click here to read more about the Hair Drawing Series.)