Viv Miller
Soft Sky 2024
oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne
Artist statement:
I like to organise a vision of the world in my own language of motifs, patterns and forms. Soft Sky is entirely made up, as you can probably tell. I wanted to imagine a beautiful natural image—sublime and bucolic—of peering at the sun through branches, but with just a hint of something else in there as well.
My work tends to contain a sense of reality being slightly warped. Here the sky consists of soft, gooey stripes of colour and the sun is green and shiny and plastic. Influenced by digital culture, my paintings play between abstraction and realism, and maybe a little between unease and comfort too. I think I’m creating pictures of nature in retreat of artificiality, but I hope that there’s something tender in that mix too.