Melinda Miles

Passages

Author: Elizabeth Cook-Romero, Sarah McCarty, Eric Thomson and Monty Phister

Collected here are the most striking paintings from Melinda Miles' signature collections: portraiture, a series of interiors, a major body of still life that she was best known for, and a late series of train imagery that became a summation of her life's work.

Product Unavailable

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Description

Melinda Miles (1944–2009) belonged to a generation of artists who settled in Santa Fe around 1980. She had a career spanning nearly forty years. Her painting included portraiture, a series of interiors, a major body of still life that she was best known for, and a late series of train imagery that became a summation of her life’s work. Influences from Hopper, Hammershoi, Peto, and the Luminists are evident. Yet she would develop a distinctive voice that allowed her to treat themes of passage and life’s impermanence with what she once called a “sweet sadness.”

Miles developed a painting technique that rivaled the realist trompe l’oeil style of William Harnett, but adapted it to hint at transcendence rather than materiality. Of the motif of passage, recurring in each of her thematic periods, she said, “I find a kind of beauty in that ongoing stream of loss and newness.”

About the Author

Elizabeth Cook-Romero, former art critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, is currently a bookstore owner and citizen activist.

More on this Book

Melinda Miles (1944-2009) belonged to a generation of artists who settled in Santa Fe around 1980. She had a career spanning nearly forty years. Her painting included portraiture, a series of interiors, a major body of still life that she was best known for, and a late series of train imagery that became a summation of her life's work. Influences from Hopper, Hammershoi, Peto, and the Luminists are evident. Yet she would develop a distinctive voice that allowed her to treat themes of passage and life's impermanence with what she once called a "sweet sadness." Miles developed a painting technique that rivaled the realist trompe l'oeil style of William Harnett, but adapted it to hint at transcendence rather than materiality. Of the motif of passage, recurring in each of her thematic periods, she said, "I find a kind of beauty in that ongoing stream of loss and newness."