The Landscapes
of Ben Miller

by Michal Dzitko

The first thing you notice when you arrive in Montana is the landscape. It is mountainous, arid, and larger than life itself. It fills you with a pervasive sense of solitude. Your surroundings quickly become imprinted on your mind and body. The mountains, rivers, and long stretches of highway quickly begin to inscribe your world. 

There is a coarseness to this palace. Its physiognomy is much easier to experience than to convey. Ben Miller shares this physiognomy. He stands firmly on the ground, towering over any listener in spirit if not in body, personifying not only sturdiness and self-reliance needed to meet the demands of living here but also the very landscape he is surrounded by. 

Ben is in equal parts a fisherman and a painter. His sport as well as his art elevates the quotidian to a dignified height. The philosophy of his life is coextensive with his practice; it emerges from the earth rather than the ivory tower. It is eerily uncanny, however, how the conclusions and wisdom he reaches bear a resemblance to those of scholars. 

I learned about Ben’s art and philosophy by talking with him. We did so in Butte, a copper-mining superpower of the late eighteenth century, now a post-industrial city falling into disrepair. The original attraction of illustrious wealth brought with it an influx of Asian immigrants, leading to the formation of Peking Parlor, the oldest Chinese restaurant still in business in the United States.

The interior of Peking Parlor, painted in a uniform hue of vibrant orange creamsicle, could easily pass as the movie set for the blockbuster joint production of Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. The restaurant, entirely staffed by Montana locals, is filled with a strange unease. Psychedelia, industry, and five spice permeate the air. The food––somehow surprisingly––is comically awful.

Ben and I sat down to have a conversation in a small booth. What follows is a transcript of it which has been edited for clarity and concision. 

Can you tell me about your painting practice? How did it start and how did it evolve over time?

I have been fly fishing since I was very little and I pursued painting in college. There was a day I had a discussion with my––almost an offhand comment of his––about painting with a fly rod. That’s when I knew this is what I wanted to do.

What was your painting practice like in college? Were you also drawn to natural environments?

This is brilliant! I have never been asked this question before.

There were two things in college that were really intriguing to me at the time. The first thing that really inspired me was relations with women. When you go to an art college you just kind of have to paint the female form and the models just stand there! This I never have done, especially in my little town. The other thing was death. What is death? No one really knows.There are these ideas, and then there is this symbolism surrounding them.

My greatest piece from that period might have been the Yeild Sign. This was for a school assignment to create an art piece that would go out into the everyday environment and make those who view it pause. One of my favorite bands is Pearl Jam and they released this album called Yield. I started looking at it and what I ended up doing is an art piece that is a yield signbut I ended up switching the “i”  and the “e” so that people would yield to notice that. 

There was an art history professor who came over to our class once and starts drilling us with questions about who here can’t spell properly. And then he offered a read of the work that I intended for and it felt great to have someone explain my art in a way that felt that they got it. What really motivated me in art were these conceptual ideas that I could speak in a visual manner. 

It sounds like you were interested in concepts and symbolism to an extent that you were drawn to making art about ideas. Is that still the case?

Yes, exactly, but I think all art is about ideas. Even if you’re just representing the world that is an idea. 

I’m wondering if this extends to your current paintings. Do you see them as an extension of the symbolism you were interested in?

I think what is exciting about symbolism in my paintings now is that it is a different language and a different direction to classical art. I was educated in and brought up with this classical idea of what symbolism is supposed to mean. What I’m interested in now is more in line with how bodies of water are perceived. 

There is a symbolism to how a stone is a circle. There is a symbolism to how water is a line. This can be related to hieroglyphs and language, but they are also moves created to show action. The art world has gone to great lengths to try to show that. We’re way past that. The symbolism would then come down to a reliance on people’s experiences with bodies of water. If I can show the water that they are in tune with, that is exciting, but it is subjective and so it’shard to speak to it.

There is also the symbolism of the performance. When I’m on the river, fishermen don’t actually know what I’m doing. I have this crate on the side with my paints in it. I have the fly box on my arm. I’m just out there casting the rod just like they are doing. I’m going unnoticed. There is something there.

I mean I’m just trying to paint rivers, but to push the symbolism angle, you can even make colors symbolic. There is this glorious river that flows into the Colorado which used to be themecca for rafters. Now it’s just a trickle, no whiter than this table. It was just mud, and I painted the mud of that river onto the painting.

What excites me the most now is trying to create the symbols and notice how they can be interpreted. These are still getting developed to try and show a certain place the best way that I can. I want the work to be more of a discovery as to what it could be rather than to absolutely show what it is.

It sounds to me like you’re trying to develop a language and write poetry in it.

That’s a great way of putting it. I also think that’s a reiteration of what’s going on with rivers and standing there as a human, trying to record what’s happening.

That makes sense. When you say that a stone is circle or that water is a line, it sounds like the building blocks of language. You could use this to try and depict a river as realistically as possible, but it sounds like you are interested in more open-ended interpretations.

Yes, and what you make me think of are the rules that I paint these rivers by. One of the things that really excites me is the composition: I’m looking down at the river. Why don’t I paint the hill behind it, the sky above it, and all that? It just doesn’t fit into what I want the piece to be. I don’t think its required, so I don’t paint it. That’s a rule, perhaps a stubborn rule, but I love the consistency of that.

I also love the freedom that this affords. I love the idea of being able to go into the micro as far as the fly brushes are concerned. I think it’s fascinating that we as humans come up with these forms to accomplish certain goals. A fly rod is a taper. A paintbrush is a taper. This is another parallel to painting––the taper––and how they are so similar in both painting and fishing.

The technology behind fly fishing is extraordinary. I just don’t know if paintbrushes have evolved to the point that flyrods have. There are constant innovations in the leaders, the lines, the rod itself. It’s a more developed way of transporting paint from one spot to another. Here, let me show you.

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At this point, Ben excitedly took out a sketchbook in which he documents new ideas for fly-brushes, painting instruments he developed made from ropes and wires, which are affixed to a fly rod and designed to carry paint onto the canvas. Their various configurations allow for a range of mark-making that feels extended past what a human hand equipped with a brush could produce: high-velocity explosions, organic spirals, and wavering lines. 

As Ben turned the pages of his notebook, my mind was still processing our conversation about language. Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher, once rather dramatically wrote that “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” This turn of phrase served to illustrate a simple point: that there is no possibility of a private language. Language is a game we play, and the rules of this game are set by social coordinates in which the players find themselves. 

Through developing a painterly language built on a system of symbols, Ben participates in a well-established tradition that many artists throughout history such as Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klimt, and Jean-Michel Basquiat partook in as well. In his case, however, the coordinates he finds himself in are particularly asocial; they place him in solitude right on the bank of a river. The budling blocks of Ben’s poetry are the very building blocks of the bodies of water that he paints his poetry about. I began to wonder if this eventually would lead him to abstraction.

It seems important to you that you paint nature. Would you ever step away from that and paint an entirely abstract painting?

I would. Absolutely. I was working on a Rothko recently.

What do you mean you were working on a Rothko?

It was more of a Rothko-inspired idea. I went to the Art Institute of Chicago and saw a Rothko there for the first time. The painting floated! It was amazing how he could make them float. Everything slowed down when I saw it. That was a different headspace for me. I liked that and I didn’t even know that was possible until I experienced it.

I started working on something similar. It was a monster: 12 feet by 6 feet. But then at the top there was little crack, and I thought to just paint over the crack. I was there by myself, and I was done painting when the piece split entirely right down the middle where that crack was. I was sick. 

Before that happened, It was effective. I had the flow. I painted it with the fly rod and it was an abstraction of the Jefferson River. So yes, I dove a bit into the abstract just to honor the painters that came before myself.

I think it's fair to say that without context your paintings already read abstract, at least to me. The context then guides me towards seeing them as representational. Do you care that people see them as either one, rather than just having their own interpretation?

I love it! People are going to come to that conclusion. There is this fellow that comes up to me during the art fairs in Chicago. He's usually had a number of drinks by that point and he's always just right in my face about how my art is impressionism. Sure, I see that. 

As far as me trying to put on there what I see, I'm trying my best, you know. Hell, my paintings might be the most real thing I've ever seen. The only thing that could probably rival with this is a photograph. Isn’t that a weird take on it? 

I don’t think that’s such a weird take actually. It is interesting, though, because your earliest works were representational and now you’re thinking of going towards pure abstraction. Do you think there is a gradual shift towards the abstract in your work?

The move towards the abstract would be more than just a celebration of using the fly brush. What I consider abstraction comes from my mind more so than what is literally there. That’s why I was interested in Rothko. Even he loosely represented nature.

So the question really becomes: what is it that we are abstracting? Just throwing color for no reason does not interest me at all. What gets me excited is thinking about what I’m trying to show and seeing if it can be done. For example, can something like a Rothko be shown with a fly rod? I would want to show that it could.

Another thing about Rothko is that his color schemes were relatively simple. I’m currently in the process of grinding stones from the river to make them into paint. I want to use that to make a Rothko because of how simple but how subtle his work can be. I would want to demonstrate the simplicity of the palette.

It sounds like you remain interested in the idea of painting the outside world when considering the idea of abstract paintings.

Yes, but having said that it sounds almost like walking backwards. Here’s this method that you choose to paint with, and you are trying to depict something in the outside world that is abstract in itself. The nature of rivers is abstract: the way they flow, the way they change, what the person experiencing them is processing. So you try to show that but then as you build up more layers it starts to gradually become more realistic. Usually you work really fine and then learn to loosen your brush a bit. Here, you are coming at it from the opposite direction. I never thought about it this way before.

I’m curious about how your interest in nature came to be. Earlier, you told me that it was your brother’s suggestion to pick up a fly-fishing rod and paint with it. Can you tell me more about that?

Imagine a little shack. I had a stove in there that couldn’t hold a flame. The fires would only go for two hours. If I got a fire going, I’d prefer to put wet wood on there because that way the fire would last longer. I was there with my older brother, Sam, and I was painting trout in water. I was obsessed with it. I have maybe 40-50 paintings of trout swimming in water in my garage. I wanted to be able to show that perspective of looking into water. I was intrigued by painting water. It was almost a joke when the brainstorm between me and Sam started to happen as to how it could be done.

When I went outside to try casting paint for the first time, I dipped a sock into the paint and the sock overweighed the rod. It was so heavy! Just trying to throw that load against a canvas was hard. It was more weight than this rod has ever endured. But finally––finally Michal––it hit. I had been painting in the living room because that’s where the stove was. It was so cold. I lived in thermal underwear, in itchy wool underwear. I had a golden retriever and I had to always get her to lay on my feet because it would get so cold. And there I was sitting just trying to paint trout under water. That’s where I was at, trying to paint stream bottoms, and then light dancing on the surface of the stream.

As far as the conversation with my brother, I can’t even remember it clearly. I just recall we both said something about creating new textures and he suggested the idea of doing it with a fly rod.Maybe I laughed about it, and then started to wonder if it could be done. The subject matter came a bit later, maybe an hour later.

The pathway towards meaning through immersion in his everyday life that Ben took has also recently been of interest to Western philosophers. Jolanta Brach-Czaina, a contemporary Polish thinker, gave this pathway a status of special significance in her 1994 book “Crevices of Being.” In it, Brach-Czaina focuses on the experience of the quotidian as the often-overlooked source of satisfaction in the search of meaning we tend to chase with the ferocity of an addict.

“The peculiar form in which most of our existence takes place––the everyday––has paradoxical properties,” Brach-Czaina writes. The paradoxical properties she has in mind are the combination of simultaneous existence and non-existence. To Brach-Czaina, “reality reveals itself (…) as intrusively present and at the same time imperceptible.” Everyday experience permeates our attention but comes as across as uninteresting and undeserving of attention. 

It is, however, precisely in this state that meaning may be found. Brach-Czaina considers the existence of “crevices” or “cracks” in a previously undifferentiated state of being. These, in turn, can bring about revelations that satisfy existential questioning. Ben’s painting practice emerges out of precisely out of a crack of this sort. Casting a fly rod with a mantric regularity akin to the practice of transcendental meditation, he is able to break through the quotidian and into the meaningful. This meditative motion is what carries over from his life as a fisherman to his life as an artist. Ben’s paintings are testaments of his break through the everyday, crevices of being solidified into tangible art objects. 

Similarly to how transcendental meditation can be a gateway into self-awareness, Brach-Czainaunderscores the revelatory power of paying attention to everyday experience. This, in turn, made me wonder as to the nature of Ben’s radiant self-awareness. What began to interest me specifically, is whether he considers painting his purpose and, if so, what his experience of living a life in line with his purpose might be like.

Through your practice, do you feel like you're living your true life? Do you believe you found your purpose in painting?

Absolutely. I'd rather die than not do it. I think everybody gets up and is just a species walking on this planet. Some person is going to split wood. Someone is going to drive a truck. Someoneis going to write articles. Myself, as a species looking at that, I find that fascinating. Just the idea of movement and having purpose is fascinating. 

I was recently thinking that this feeling of living in line with your purpose is the same feeling as living in line with your values. If you do act on what you've deemed important then you just might fulfil your purpose in the world. But that’s too grandiose and existential for me to see that bigger picture, that self-righteous or idealistic picture, of what I’m doing. 

I sometimes think of this in the context of looking back on your life and asking yourself “did you do what you felt you needed to do?” But I don't know. I’m not sure if there’s anyone that does know. I feel fortunate that people are going to recognize what I've been doing. That's very humbling. That's very beautiful. 

That there are some folks that would find value in what I did, that's wild. That's crazy to me. As far as how do I feel in terms of fulfilling my life’s purpose, it’s creating paintings of rivers with a flyrod. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I do. I’m going to keep chasing that, and I think the ultimate goal is to travel the world and paint exotic rivers. 

That was Japan, that was a dream come true. I’m still crying about that. 

How would you describe that feeling?

Oh man… I just cry. It’s this overwhelming feeling of nostalgia, whatever the hell that means. Even when I’m there, it feels like I’m almost out of my body a little bit. And then I make the movement, make some decisions. Now you got me thinking there’s a bit of me in my paintings. It’s wonder. It’s a wonder, Michal. 

What is nostalgia to you?

I think my experience of time, of all the time that led up to the experience of the presentmoment, is a feeling of nostalgia. Say I was still teaching high schoolers. I wouldn’t be in the middle of Japan getting a burger that I can barely say the name of. 

That's true but if you weren't teaching high schoolers you might have never made it to Japan.

I might have been there sooner! I think I should have gotten out a long time ago. Another thing is to be so grateful to be in that spot and to realize where you've been and know what you did to get where you are. 

You sound very knowledgeable of yourself. Do you think that knowing yourselfnecessary to recognize that you're living out your purpose?

I think it does because that is coming from one’s core. That almost might be where even an idea for a painting comes from. No one necessarily knows where it came from, and then, all of a sudden, it's there. It's powerful but you are never sure whether it came from the internal or external worlds.

And then you're asking whether knowing about myself is important to living out my purpose. My purpose is painting but where the paintings came from I’m not sure about. I don’t know from where in me that came to be.

But I can tell you this: I’ll never burn out. I have so many more ideas and I'm motivated by that. I don't know where the ideas came from, but they're right in front of me. I think that's how I'm wired. I sit back, I guess, and appreciate that part even though I don't know if some of these ideas have been there the whole time.

It's kind of like one of the fly brushes. I wanted to put texture on the stone. Sometimes the stones have a black hue down there and I was trying to think of a way of giving them more of a tinge of color. It was there the whole time. All I had to do was use a cocoon brush just like I would use to make the stone but not load it with paint entirely. I’d just load the end. If you just load the outside so it's very light and then when it hits it leaves a perfect texture with a lot of space for the next layer to carry a different color behind it. 

That was there the whole time, and I just figured it out like a month ago. I know that sounds like just a breakthrough in my technique but it’s also an idea. Where did that idea come from? I don’tknow but man, I wish I would have known this three years ago!

What is interesting about your decision to paint with a fly rod is that it distances you from control. Do you think about the role of control in your art?

It all goes back to the idea of painting with a fly rod. It’s all about how much control one can have with that. That's what I try to master: the idea of control to a certain degree while embracing the fact that it's not the most controllable action.

It seems that no action has total control, but you seem to actively have chosen to give up some control. 

I like that. It feels good to me. I guess knowing myself and how I think, it occurs in those little stages and builds to something bigger. Tying new flies is a good example. I can sit there and tie flies forever. These tiny bugs one day will catch a fish and that moment lasts for only a few minutes. Then I can finish that fly and move on to the next one. Then it starts all over again. So I guess that's kind of how I think. If I want to get excited, I can either tie another fly or try a new one that I just learned tying the past ones.

Sorry, I took that from control to awareness and then time. That’s the attention span that I have. This is what I do. This color, this shape, go!

No worries at all. I’m curious though: are you drawn to capturing what most people overlook?

That’s going to be the perception of what I have done. But I don't look at it as ordinary. I look at it as exciting. And I look at it as a challenge of capturing something. That's how I’d want to phrase that. 

Do you like the challenge because you enjoy the feeling of overcoming it?

No, when I used to carve stone, I would think of projects where I would try to take something to its extreme or the extreme of what the material could give me and then fail. I loved it. And then I would troubleshoot how to make it even better. It's just like those fly-brushes, right? I mean, that's a learning curve. I’m trying to get something that's durable, something that’s going to last. That's a challenge. 

Do you think you’re capturing something that is fleeting?

Also no. I think whether the paintings are finished or not. What they are pictures of has been there for thousands and thousands of years. It’s quite literally looking back in time. As far as my subject matter goes, you’re trying to capture a place that has been carved into time. It’s not fleeting at all. Another thing is that I think art is eternal. Art will outlive me. Sure, it might fall apart at some point but as far as my awareness is concerned, I would hope it is eternal. 

What do you think outlasts us if it is not the material world?

The idea. I think ideas are eternal. There is this sense that when you glance into something and you’re sure that you’re the first person to glance into that, that gets registered somewhere somehow. 

There’s a hole in the world now, a hole for my art. And should there be that? I don't think so. I think that’s as important as anything else. 

I agreed with Ben about this point. I also believe that ideas are eternal. They appear to bepermanently inscribed in the mind, perhaps even in the very mind of God. The success of Ben’s art, however, is not the novelty of it or the ideas that it is the instantiation of. Rather, Ben’s art is an efflux of his life and the philosophy he arrived at. Dignified, layered, and varied just like the terrain of Montana, the landscape of his mind continued to amaze me throughout the hours of conversations we shared, many of which did not make their way into this essay. 

This amazement enriched my appreciation of his art. My one hope is that through reading this writing, and through learning more about our interactions, yours will be too. No set of words can capture the staggering experience of interacting with Ben or his paintings directly. No river or body of water can ever truly be represented by paint, since––as Ben points out––the very nature of rivers is abstract. Just as Ben and his art, they are not static entities, but processes set in motion. Consider this a mere invitation to enter this motion as well.