SHANTEL MILLER
We Are
Together Again
ISSUE 0: THE PRO-TESTING PRINT
As somebody who grew up in the church, after moving to Boston for school, I grappled with the intersections of religion and identity by confronting the insidious role Christianity played in the United States. For the first time, in a visceral way, I was learning about this tension of what it means to be a Black woman in the US in my body. During that time, I began looking inwardly at myself as a means to develop more intimacy with my various parts, as well as document the process of self-actualization through the act of making. The practice of slowing down and looking at oneself makes room for direct communication between the subject and the viewer, where transparency, vulnerability, and intimacy are more accessible. I’ve made self-portraits as well as painted people that I know as a means to identify my own subjectivity as a complex human and reveal multiplicity within representations of Blackness.
In Woman In Tub (Entomb), the tub could be seen as a casket where a body is put away. This view is typically not accessible to most, and the orientation is spliced open for the viewer to witness. I set up these conditions for this reality to be made known, for the invisible to be made visible, and to invite the broader public into my lived realities. In the same piece, the face is obscured, which renders the figure anonymous and suggests an intentional erasure of identity. The body is in the nude and exposed, leaving them vulnerable yet concealed as selected information is withheld from the viewer. The figure is cramped in the space and uncomfortable. I’ve been told that this pose of lying on your back signifies surrendering to what is beyond you, and for me, this is a striking contradiction of surrendering to this place of discomfort and also holding the tension that’s apparent in the flexing of the foot. For me, this indicates that there is still life present in spite of what is perceived as a tomb, pointing toward hope.
On Color
At times, color is used metaphorically to bring seemingly unrelated or abstract ideas together in the pictorial space. Working in this way creates complexity and ambiguity in the subject matter and offers multiple interpretations of meaning. I use color and light to provoke emotional tonality in the subject matter. The choice of color can suggest the temperature or a specific mood, as well as provide structure within the composition. In my painted spaces, color plays an integral role in leading the viewer through the implied narrative and performs as the subject's interior space.
In my process, I typically work with a photo as a reference, and through the act of painting, the image shifts through my color choices. As a result, the color tends to either foreground the figure in ways that the photograph did not, or it brings the viewer into a heightened sense of the figure’s reality. For instance, We Are Together Again is about restoring a love and connection that was lost. The vibrant yellow suggests an atmosphere that is joyful and celebratory. In this significant moment, I’ve chosen warmer, even juicy colors that ignite sensation and excitement, companies with the gestures of these two figures locked in hands and powerful eye contact.
My art practice is a way for me to make meaning of life, and painting in particular has offered me strategies to navigate a public and private self. This is important to me as an artist because growing up I really needed an outlet to express some of the complexities within my lived experiences, and this has enabled me to process them through the act of making. Over time, it has been a tool of survival. As someone who grew up in a religious environment, there is a separation between an ethereal world and the broader world, and this plays into my need for connection. I hope that through this active communication, I am able to connect with something beyond myself. So painting has grown to become vital for me to understand myself in relation to what is around me and my proximity to those things.
Each painting has a flat surface that operates as a portal into complex multidimensional pictorial space. Working within this paradox, I explore notions of interiority through practices of looking that reflect an outward and inward mode of being and affirm authority and existence in representations of Blackness. Inspired by my immediate surroundings, each painting synthesizes lived and imagined experiences through a language of symbolism. I embrace collage as an improvisational device for world-building. From this vantage point, I explore interiority in my paintings by representing a psychological space with my use of color and depiction of the body in familiar domestic spaces. Through these representations, the body is situated in a specific context that weaves together a conversation about time, space, and presentations of the public and private self.
On Realism and the Black Imaginary
One of my professors, Josephine Halverson, gave me some essential advice towards the end of grad school. She said something along the lines of, “When you give somebody something to believe in, it’s important that you know what you want to say.” For me, realism functions in this realm of belief because when you paint something that is convincingly true, it holds a certain weight to it that can convey an idea or an assortment of ideas. I am drawn to realist painting because it allows me to slow down and consider the complexities of the human condition more intimately.
The pictorial spaces I create foster a better understanding of my own experiences and, more broadly, the experiences of those around me. I am drawn to painting the Black body in interior spaces in the style of realism as a way to invite you into this alternate world or social conditioning that is very real in part because they’re derived from experiences, whether lived or imaginary, and made real through the act of painting. I’m drawn to working this way to centralize the Black body in ideas and narratives that I believe are necessary. It’s about creating a space for people to enter into that has existed or that I want them to find some truth in.
We Are Together Again, Oil on Canvas, 29.5 x 24”, 2022