“Ruth Miller has long been a presence and eminence to many painters. Her work is immediately seductive and giving; on every level of its conception, be it the subject, formal qualities, light or draughtsmanship, her work expresses a great bountifulness, graciousness and generosity. Her brush and eye are lyrical – in Ruth’s work, composition is not merely about placement or arrangement, it is composition in the fully realized musical sense we know. The eye is beckoned to indulge in and be delighted by an inquiring calligraphy which dances between line, plane and mass, and is rewarded with complex, fragrant and substantial color.

It is therefore with great pleasure that we announce Ruth Miller as Master Class Guest of Honor of the JSS at the Certosa this summer.”

Israel Hershberg
Artistic Director, Jerusalem Studio School
2011

Oak – Pond

Images courtesy of Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York and Ruth Miller. Titles included when available.

As the Guest of Honor for the JSS Master Class program at the Certosa di Pontignano, Ruth Miller will provide a slide talk on her work and critiques for the students in the program. Click here to visit the JSS at the Certosa website for further information.

Born in Columbia, Missouri, Miller began her formal art education at the University of Missouri. In the early 1950s she moved to New York City to study at the Art Students’ League, and through the context of the Tenth Street art scene of those first years in New York, she formed her lasting commitment to representational painting. She married her first husband Rowland Elzea in 1958 and moved to rural Pennsylvania, where she remained for over a decade; during this time she taught at the Philadelphia School of Art and Design. In 1972 she moved back to New York, and the following year was invited to take over a drawing class at the New York Studio School, beginning a rich, longstanding teaching relationship with the school. Miller married her second husband, painter Andrew Forge, in 1974, and moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1975.

Miller has taught at the New York Studio School, Queens College, Parsons School of Design, University of Hartford, Yale University Summer School, Studio Art School of the Aegean in Samos, Greece, and International School of Art in Umbria, Italy. Her work has been exhibited at the Bowery Gallery (NY), Lohin Geduld Gallery (NY), National Academy of Design Museum, New York Studio School Gallery, Alexander Hogue Gallery in Tulsa, OK, and the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University. Her work can be found in collections at the Delaware Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery, National Academy of Design, University of Delaware and Bryn Mawr College, as well as in private collections throughout the United States and Europe. She was an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College and she had a traveling retrospective of her drawings in 2003 at the New York Studio School Gallery, Jaffe-Friede & Strauss Galleries at Dartmouth College, and the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College.

More recently, Miller joined sculptor Natalie Charkow Hollander in a two person show of recent works at Lohin Geduld Gallery in New York in 2008. She was included in the 2009 group exhibition “Resonance of Place” at Gross McLeaf Gallery, Philadelphia. Miller served as the juror for the Wright State University “Drawing From Perception IV” juried show in 2009, with an accompanying solo exhibition, Ruth Miller: Paintings and Works on Paper.

Miller is a member of the National Academy of Design and of Zeuxis, an association of still life painters. She received the Emil and Dines Carlsen Still Life Award in 1997, the Benjamin Altman Landscape Prize in 1999, and the Henry Ward Ranger Purchase Award in 2000. She has twice been awarded grants by the Ingram Merrill Foundation.

DrawingAtlas, a project of Lohin Geduld Gallery – images of Miller’s drawings
Ruth Miller at Zeuxis
Ruth Miller with Natalie Charkow Hollander at Lohin Geduld Gallery
Ruth Miller in Resonance of Place at Gross McLeaf Gallery

Untitled, 2006

Weeping Cherry in Bloom, 2007

The Purple Broccoli, 2006-08

Oak Tree House, 1997

Sheep in Pasture, 2003-04

Malthouse Night Still Life, 2007-08

Tree Rock Pond, 1998

Enamel, Jug Still Life with Pink Rose

Gourds, Eggplant, Pitcher

Missouri Oak – Spring, 1998

Cabbage, Glass, Outdoors

Moon, Cabin, Tree