“My paintings explore artistic transformation and ways of making the landscape genre fresh and original.”
Susan Miiller was born in NYC, NY. She received an M.F.A. in drawing and painting from the University of North Texas in 1992 and a B.F.A in painting from SUNY New Paltz in 1988. Miiller has been faculty at SUNY since 1999.
Miiller is included in National Association of Professional Women and Who’s Who in America. She is the recipient of several awards including Artists Fellowship Grants 2016/2017, Juror’s Award, Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Valley, 2013/ Artist in Residence Award, 2017: Catskill Conservation Center/ Orange Arts Grants, 2016, 2014 and 2009/ Outstanding Teaching Award, 2009 and Individual Development Awards, 2009-2006, SUNY New Paltz/ Artist in Residence Award, 2006: Catskill Conservation Center/ Special Opportunity Stipends Grant, 2003: New York Foundation for the Arts/ Faculty Development Awards, 2004 and 2002: SUNY New Paltz/ Artist in Residence Award: 2001: Weir Farm Trust/ Honorable Mention; 1999 and 1998: Susquehanna Art Museum/ First Place Award, 1996: SOHO Gallery/ Gallery Artists Series Award, 1995: Women and Their Work Gallery/ Artist in Residence, 1993: Vermont Studio Center/ and the Grand Purchase Award, 1991: Arkansas Arts and Science Center. She has participated in television interviews, lectures and seminars including the Fulcrum Gallery seminar: Artists Talk on Art, NYC, and the Dallas Visual Art Center seminar: The Business of Art. Miiller has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries throughout the United States including the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Museum of New Mexico, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Austin Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas Artists Museum, and Longview Art Museum. Her work is included in many important public and private collections including The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Centex Corporation, Sterling Software, and SAP America Corporation.
Two recent series, In Search of a Landscape and Souvenirs bring to the forefront abstracted landscape elements in my work. From the beginning, I have challenged myself to make good contemporary landscape art, I believe my paintings must explore the subject of artistic transformation and ways of making an age old painting tradition fresh and original. The content of my work comes from my plein-air painting investigations, photographs of the landscape that I have taken over the years, as well as my use of the medium of collage as a vehicle for exploring and inventing composition. My work has always been about an expression of the embodiment of a duality between technique and imagery. My plein-air paintings are thickly painted, direct observations of nature. In the studio, my paintings often begin as an abstract color field with overpainted imagery that outlines classical landscapes. The technique subtractive painting technique combined with additive painterly approaches creates dramatic modulations of color and space, a wide variety of rich painterly techniques, my work obtains a physical presence of surface that underscores the beauty of the painted surfaces.