Gary Snyder Fine Art MT to Present Ben Miller’s Endangered River Paintings at Hamptons Fine Art Fair July 11 through July 14, 2024

Gallery to also feature Mid-Century Modernist Artists Thomas Downing, Vivian Springford and Janet Sobel.

Gary Snyder Fine Art MT will present a major exhibition of Ben Miller’s Endangered River paintings at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair this July. Miller’s paintings represent many of the iconic fly-fishing rivers of the West – the Ruby, Big Hole, Gallatin, Yellowstone, Madison, and more.

Miller will create a large fly cast painting on the grounds of the fair Thursday through Saturday, painting the famed Accabonac Creek that runs behind Jackson Pollock’s studio. Proceeds from the sale of the painting will benefit SOFO. The booth will also feature a selection of paintings and works on paper by several of the artists that Gary Snyder championed with galleries in New York City, including Thomas Downing, Milton Resnick, Janet Sobel, and Vivian Springford.

Janet Sobel scholar Sarah A. Rogers, from The University of Melbourne, will be in the booth for the duration of the Hamptons fair to discuss the Janet Sobel paintings on exhibition.

Ben Miller has an international reputation for painting rivers and natural bodies of water, drawing attention to their needs in the face of climate change and environmental challenges. His unique method of painting on transparent plexiglass with a fly rod is featured in the short film by Manabu Inada, Rhythms of the River. Pursuing a passion for the American West and new frontiers, Gary Snyder moved to Montana in 2018 where he discovered Ben Miller painting the Gallatin River.

Miller comes out of a Western tradition of wilderness artists that harkens back to Charles Russell in the late 1800s, continues on through the early American modernists such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Arthur Dove, and most radically manifests in Cody, Wyoming-born Jackson Pollock. Miller furthers Pollock’s drip painting tradition through an innovative technique of fly cast painting that embodies gravity and physicality. Pollock scholar Henry Adams has written:

"When Jackson Pollock first exhibited his paintings, they sent out a palpable energy quite different from a traditional Renaissance painting. Viewers were blown into another zone of consciousness. We get this same feeling from Ben Miller’s work, which transfers our usual ideas about representation into something different — a form of awareness that’s strangely abstract, mystical, and even a bit religious."

Over the last four years, Miller has partnered with environmental organizations such as the Hudson and Hackensack River Keepers, Gallatin River Task Force, Save Wild Trout, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Friends of the Chicago River to raise awareness and funds for river preservation.

For over thirty years, Gary Snyder has focused on the discovery of underappreciated and undervalued historically rooted artists. Many of the artists Snyder first introduced have received prominent recognition, such as Janet Sobel, whose exhibition, Janet Sobel: All-Over, is currently on view at The Menil Collection in Houston.

Ben Miller’s presence at the Hampton’s Fine Art Fair is concurrent with the exhibition at Oxbow Gallery, Bozeman MT, Ben Miller - Endangered Rivers, curated by Gary Snyder. The exhibition, along with video and writings on Ben Miller, can be seen at www.oxbowgallery.art.

For further information, please contact gary@gsfamt.com or 646-391-0955.

Hamptons Fine Art Fair
Booth 218
605 County Rd 39,
Southampton, NY 11968