beckymillerartist

I have always known I am an artist. My mother jokes that my obsession with drawing began as soon as I was old enough to hold a pencil. From earliest years, my artwork has revealed a deep fascination with the organic movement and individual personalities that characterize all living things. I have turned the majority of my attention to detailed studies of kelp, sea life, and tidepools. My large oil paintings of colorful kelp that has washed up on the beach are a unique blend of realism and abstraction. I insist on painting solely from my own personal experience, so each painting is a true expression of the world as I see it.

I have been obsessed with creating art for as long as I can remember, and have shown and sold my paintings and drawings in several galleries in California and Oregon. Over the past twenty-five years, in addition to creating my own fine art work, I have created several commissioned works of art, a large wall mural, numerous graphic design projects, and many book and cover illustrations.

In 2010, I entered four of my paintings in the 2010 Celebrate Arts show in Florence, Oregon. All four pieces won awards, including three Merit Awards and one Honorable Mention. I additionally had a one-woman invitational show at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon during the summer of 2011 and was juried into The Artist's Vision: A Juried Exhibit, part of the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts in the summer of 2011, where I won an Honorable Mention. In late 2011, two of my paintings were juried into the “Celebrating Artistic Expression” exhibition at William Jessup University in Rocklin, California.

I was one of four artists-in-residence at Skybound Art Gallery in Toledo from July, 2010 through October, 2011. I am currently working in my own studio/gallery in Toledo’s fast-growing Arts District and am represented by Ozone Fine Art in Newport, Oregon and Ryan Gallery in Lincoln City, Oregon. I was also the featured artist for November and December, 2011 at Shearwater Gallery in Seaside, Oregon. In February, 2012, my artwork was the subject of a feature article in Willamette Living Magazine. I am an Associate Member of Oil Painters of America and serve on the Board of Directors for Toledo’s Annual Labor Day Weekend Art Walk, where I am in charge of the artist community’s marketing efforts.

I majored in Advertising Design at Pacific Union College in Angwin, California, where I studied painting and drawing under Roger Blum, and design, composition and art history under John Carstens. I also studied the human figure extensively for several years at Hipbone Studio in Portland, Oregon under Jeff Burke. I have additionally been mentored by my mother-in-law, well-known Western artist Vel Miller, and by Toledo artists, Douglas Haga and Michael Gibbons.