Ben Miller

by Gary Snyder

I believe that Ben Miller is an artistic genius different in significant ways from artists before him. He powerfully comes out of two important artistic traditions, American Wilderness painting and the breakthroughs of Jackson Pollock, and he is positioned uniquely, to his credit, outside of a third, the dominant art world of today, filled mostly with artists who make paintings to illustrate the ideas in their heads.

The American Wilderness tradition is perhaps best exemplified by Charlie Russell (1864 – 1926) , also known as “the cowboy artist”, who painted over 2000 paintings of the American West. He was an advocate for Native American Indians, supporting the bid by landless Chippewa to have a reservation in Montana. Russell grew up in Missouri, but moved to Montana at the age of 16 to work on a sheep ranch. Russell exemplified a love and reverence for the American West, and a working method of traveling into the wilderness for extended times, a love and reverence shared by Ben, whether he is hunting, fishing or painting.

Interestingly enough, Jackson Pollock has also been called a “cowboy artist”, in part because he was born in Cody, Wyoming, and also from a photograph of him from 1927 with a rifle, in Western boots and a cowboy hat. But Ben’s relation to the Pollock tradition has more to do with Pollock’s ground-breaking choice to make “drip paintings” by flinging paint from brushes and stick’s, partnering with gravity and “wildness” to create art that made a clean break with the past, ushering in the new movement of Abstract Expressionism. Ben arguably takes Pollock further with his use and expertise with a fly rod coupled with his innovative creation of what he calls “fly brushes” – absorbent shaped materials that he puts on the end of his line to create an extraordinary range of marks. Carefully studying his chosen river, he casts over two thousand times to make a 3 by 4 foot painting, and more when he paints large paintings – as large as 8 x 12 feet – in the studio. His innovative use of transparent plexiglass to paint on one side to create a final work on the other is groundbreaking.

Two aspects of Ben’s art are particularly fascinating. The casting motion that Ben uses with extraordinary expertise is in itself a thing of beauty – an algorithm that feels not only universal – think of waves in the ocean, grain moved by the wind, the relaxed breathing of a master meditator – but is also supremely beautiful – Ben makes beauty with beauty.

Second, Ben captures nature in time and space – the six hours in front of a river, cast after cast, is akin to a photograph – the river is captured but it also still runs free – the Pollock-like methodology creates a sense of all-over movement , allowing the viewer the heightened experience of the river itself.

Artists for time immemorial have shown us new ways to see the world. Ben’s eye looks out, not in. His mind is used to create tools to make art, not to be the subject of art. He is sophisticated, but also a populist, a fisherman and hunter who understands the world of prey and predator, who sees being human as also being animal.

Our world teeters on the brink of cataclysm from climate change, and human beings are more and more detached from nature and wilderness. The art world has pushed itself in to a corner of elitism, solipsism and market manipulation. I believe Ben is on the cusp of Zeitgeist – and the cusp of Zeitgeist is the stuff great art is made of.