Tom Miller/ Painting/ Hiding the Body
My artwork is about seeing, language, politics and process. The characters in my paintings are real and fictional everymen in nefarious, humorous, absurd, pathetic and questionable situations. I use forced perspective and symmetry in my work as a structural limitation and as a metaphor or analysis of the political condition. Like the Minimalists, I also use repetition. This is to reflect the mass production and conformity in our culture and to further define and complicate the imagery. My two-dimensional works are as much sculpture as drawing and painting. The imagery is defined by the thickness of the paint, graphite, steel, and fine smooth or polished surface textures. These works are usually black or white. I use a monochromatic palette to reference the notion of absolute truth. I subvert this notion by concentrating the physicality of the paint on forming an image. This makes the imagery subtle and difficult to see. The resulting image is ominous, murky and sometimes funny
