{"id":103196,"date":"2026-05-27T07:56:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T14:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=103196"},"modified":"2026-05-27T07:56:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T14:56:35","slug":"abstraction-is-not-absence-in-nina-millers-the-in-between","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/abstraction-is-not-absence-in-nina-millers-the-in-between\/","title":{"rendered":"Abstraction Is Not Absence in Nina Miller’s “The In Between”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Nina Miller, “Briefly, Swiftly, Softly”<\/p><\/div>\n

In the midst of our rapidly evolving, instant-gratification society with constant distractions, I believe we’ve lost our way. \u2014Nina Miller<\/h4>\n

These days, when so much public commentary is clearly calculated to avoid offending our litigious oligarchs, we may well find ourselves searching the national conversation for evidence such as Nina Miller\u2019s, here, of awareness of what is so fatally lacking in our culture. What she expresses is a rare awareness that it is actually possible not only to discern the truth, but to speak it; that objective facts do exist, and that we ignore them at risk to us and to future generations. The \u201cdistractions\u201d Miller refers to are just one of the ways self-interested parties, be they the undeservedly powerful or the obscenely wealthy, distract the majority public from connecting the world\u2019s increasingly uninhabitable weather to unsurvivable government policies. Of course a good painting won\u2019t take the place of an effective measles vaccine, but it can hang on the wall of a space where conscientious citizens gather to stave off the mental paralysis that serves the already self-serving, as they labor to destroy the public pursuit of progress while building future sanctuaries for themselves in the remoter parts of Greenland they are busy stealing.<\/h4>\n

Unfortunately, it\u2019s not easy to point to specifics in Miller\u2019s energetic, and emotionally stimulating abstractions that make these important points. However, what is visually present is the evidence of a healthy cerebral mechanism, one that appreciates a whole world, rather than one divided into exclusive categories. In a work like \u201cFor You,\u201d the artist shows us what might be read as a kind of urban landscape, in which figures are implied but not overdetermined. It is also one that is absolutely humming along without hostile presences or lurking threats. Miller has explained, as explicitly as she can, how such images emerge from a process that she experiences, recognizes, and encourages in herself.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Nina Miller, “All That Remains”<\/p><\/div>\n

Of course crazy people believe in the things they think, but their self-regard is both the only proof supporting their ideas, and provides ample warning that danger lies ahead of them. By comparison, in the forms and colors she assembles, Miller\u2019s cerebral paths lead her to generate actual, physical evidence of where her impulses came from, how she proceeded, and where we\u2019ve ended up for now by following her. The pleasure to be had from contemplating these original combinations of richly layered, suggestive gestures that seem rooted in healthy, enthusiastic mental processes and habits of mind argue that hers is a mental space worthy of a visit.<\/h4>\n

Once there, of course, any perceived, conventional content is probably going to depend on the viewer’s sympathetic response. It\u2019s not difficult for someone with a creative imagination to find familiar elements here that can be visited consciously or as in a dream. Many viewers complete the history of a realistic scene in their minds, or propose how it might turn out. Portraits call to mind evidence of character in the sitter. While lacking such specifics, her abstracts contain the seeds of far more original and personal possibilities.<\/h4>\n

Try spending a few moments with \u201cAll That Remains.\u201d I\u2019ve been scolded for suggesting what such a painting might represent, but all I desire is to convince readers that they are fully capable not only of an emotional response, but of a more complete and more personally satisfying one as well. Here we might see the empty easel of the artist, after she has completed a work we won\u2019t be shown\u2014which doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t see that one in the same way as we see this one: with the aid of imagination . We might notice how the white rectangle, though in some way it resembles a hole in the image, something missing, has been formed in a way that allows it to come forward, to seem rather to be in front of what surrounds it. Why does the bottom so resemble a floor? Perhaps because we all share the habits of mind that allow us to almost instantly interpret such visual data into a useful image of where we are.<\/h4>\n