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Ryan Peter Miller, The Boo-boo Series, 2017–19. Acrylic paint; dimensions variable
Painting has a Wittle Boo-boo is 1 piece in a series of 5, deriding the perceived loss of the grand narrative of painting, through the absence of depictive representation. It is a celebration of painting’s current status as it heals from this pernicious wound. The pieces I made in response, are all self-deprecating to my own seriousness in this tragicomedic legacy. The range of representation is intentionally broad and maligned, using small iconographic connections that loosely tie the ideas together, the titles being the major through-line.
Nathaniel Lang and I both earned our BFA in Painting at the University of Georgia. Nathaniel was the first in my tight cohort of art student colleagues to attend graduate school, at UNC Chapel Hill, a couple of years following our graduation. This portrait was part of a series he created for his thesis exhibition, from which another portrait went on to be included in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2006. This was significant to me as Nathaniel is one of the most humble humans I know, and his inclusion in the exhibition also marked his departure from the field of visual art at age 27. At the same time this was happening one of my graduate professors at Arizona State University failed to get their portrait into the competition, and couldn’t have made a bigger deal about the loss. I gained alot of perspective about my career from this dichotomy.
Ryan Peter Miller is bipedal hominid from the late 20th century. He is also a conceptual painter based out of Chicago, IL, and Assistant Professor of Art and the H.F. Johnson Gallery Director at Carthage College. He earned a BFA thingy from that one place and an MFA doohickey from another (University of Georgia and Arizona State University, respectively). His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Purdue University, Phoenix, AZ’s Eye Lounge, and the University of Wisconsin Fond du Lac. In addition to his own painting practice, he has an ongoing collaborative partnership with colleague Marco Rosichelli, under the name Llaboratory Co, through which their expanded practice includes sculpture, photography, video, web, and curatorial projects. Miller has exhibited internationally in cities including Los Angeles, Berlin, and Beijing, and has shown regionally at Chicago Artist’s Coalition, MDW Fair, Art Expo, and a collaborative performance at the MCA. He has completed residencies at Free Arts Center, Wassaic Artists’ Residency, and Vermont Studio Center, and was selected as a sponsored artist for Chicago’s High Concept Labs. Most recently, he completed an artist biography, written in the third person.