Michener Art Museum

Pamela M. Miller


Pamela M. Miller photo courtesy of the artist
PAINTER
BORN: June 4, 1947, Flushing, New York

In the mid-eighties I needed to change painting mediums. But from oils to what? While studying with Bonnie McLean in Buckingham I was introduced to pastels. What fun! Pure color. Spontaneous and immediate. One can leave a painting in progress and come back whenever time allows.
I like to compose landscapes defined by intense color and the changing light of day. Many of my landscapes represent the round shape in the familiar form of the hayroll. These hayrolls are part of the local scene that will soon disappear. The big sky and agricultural contours of the Sugan Road and Kitchens' Lane will be a memory. It is to the simple pleasure of viewing a field, to the work of a farmer's imprint on the land, and to the long-playing motion picture of the seasons that I dedicate my paintings.

Landscape painter and portraitist Pamela M. Miller was born in Flushing, New York. She recieved a teacher's certification from Northland College in Wisconsin. Miller has supplemented her painting career with various jobs over the years, including owning a clay mixing business with her sister, driving a school bus, and teaching in local schools. She currently owns Moon Arbor Studios in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and teaches art at West Amwell Elementary School in Lambertville, New Jersey.

Miller is known for her landscapes with hay rolls, which she wants to capture before they disappear from the Bucks County scene forever. In the 1980s, Miller began to work with pastels, finding joy in the immediacy of that medium. She has developed her own technique of sharpening her sticks and using them like finely pointed brushes. Miller is also a portrait artist for children. She exhibits regularly at the Phillips' Mill Annual Art Exhibitions in New Hope and at the Coryell Gallery in Lambertville. She was part of the Phillips' Mill 75th Retrospective Invitational show in 2005.