Melanie Miller works from a small studio on Eel Pie Island in West London. Famous in the 1960’s as a major Jazz and Blues venue, the island can only be reached by footpath or boat. Miller’s studio is a small wooden shed, situated in a boatyard at the end of the Island next to a nature reserve and on the bank of the river. This situation has influenced her work, and has a tendency to creep into her paintings.

Miller paints in oil on gesso panels and boards that she prepares herself. The surfaces are complex with a build up of layers of paint, sometimes printed or embossed, elements removed and revealed with elements of the accidental paired with the deliberate.

Miller’s forthcoming exhibition deals with the theme of natural history. Painting from life, natural ‘found’ objects of plants, flowers, animals and insects are depicted as life-size on the complex, layered background. Miller chooses many of the objects with a degree of nostalgia. For example, treasured finds from a school’s nature table, to be viewed with a mixture of mystery and wonder. They are relatively commonplace, insignificant and imperfect, beautiful and repellent. Miller thrives on the tension between attraction and repulsion, temporality and continuity. Somehow these objects form part of a personal history.