Joe Miller is an established lifetime painter who has chosen to live and work in nature for more than four decades. He lives on San Juan Island.

Journal: What makes nature a compelling element of your work?

Joe Miller: “Nature” and “my nature” are, for me, one and the same. I am of Nature. And so it is magnificent to explore Nature’s “manner of operation” through gleanings here and there of the discoveries of the sciences. Plate tectonics, climate, glacial action, and erosion’s role in the formations of land and sky provide an archaic template for a process of making a painting come into being. Nature, her “manner of operation,” and her appearance are what inspire my work.

Journal: How has living on the San Juans affected your art?

JM: I think it has softened my paintings by working in light passing through clouds, which increases the perception of all the color in the greys and whites; the light in the islands increases the sensing of the complexity of any particular color.

Journal: How does it feel to bring images of the West to new York?

JM: Thrilling. I brought the paintings to New York in a U-Haul van. My friend, Peter Flood, rode shotgun. It took us about six days to get there. Thirty oil paintings, spaciously hung and lit, made me feel exultant, and during the show it felt good to have people spend time meditating on the work and, from one person, recognition of Navajo sources of my aesthetic. To bring images of Nature into the City. Peter Flood made videos of discussions of particular works in the show: see Videos on joemiller4.com

Journal: What artists inspire you?

JM: Fra Angelico, Paul Klee, Joe Cooper, Giorgio Morandi, Giotto, Dana Roberts, Hokusai, and Charles Burchfield; among hundreds of others that are deep in my heart and unconscious mind.

Journal: In your artist statement you said “Inherent in taking on a vocation is to accept any accompanying difficulties, impoverishments, failures. This has allowed me to paint for over 50 years.” This makes me want to ask: have your struggles enriched your life, if so how?

JM: It was good to milk cows every morning and to haul payment in fresh milk home to the children. It was good to have no money or television so the children got scholarships for University. It was good to be so poor that I accepted almost no pay to appear as a guest lecturer to a class in which Dana Roberts – my to-be wife – was a student. It is good to be so rich in time that I can work on my chosen vocation day and night as other pleasures, such a repairing the roof, allow.