CAG.3217 Nick Miller, Painting Noreen: Family Blooms, 2021, oil on linen, 142 x 122 cm. Purchased, the Artist, 2022. © the artist.

WORK OF THE WEEK!

Currently featured in BODYWORK, Painting Noreen: Family Blooms (2021) by Nick Miller is a visual love letter to the artist’s wife and family.

At the same time, however, it reveals the intrinsic problem of the portrait painter: how to depict the subject effectively and honestly. Miller’s conundrum of painting his (perhaps unwilling) subject – his wife Noreen – prompted him to seek other sources that might offer a way into his subject.

‘Turning people into flowers is a reality,’ the artist remarks, ‘so I cut a cherry blossom branch on the way to the studio, and somehow it became a truer family portrait of time – an old photo of our two (then) much younger children and a polaroid of Noreen from when we first met.’

Miller’s images often occupy a multiplicity of meaning and sociocultural references. In this painting, he circles back into Western art history to create a contemporary memento mori (a reminder of our mortality) with the artist’s self-portrait (top right) watching over his family. Does an Eastern figurine (foreground) offer spiritual guidance?

Nick Miller (b.1962) works in – and reinvigorates – the traditional genres of landscape, portraiture, and still life. Born in London, he has lived and worked in Ireland since 1984. He won the inaugural Hennessy Portrait Prize (2014), was shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize (2021), and has had solo exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), and Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. He was elected to Aosdána in 2001.

Painting Noreen: Family Blooms (2021) by Nick Miller is featured in BODYWORK until 20 August.

The Arts House: Conor Tallon chats with curator Michael Waldron about a work from the Collection every Sunday morning on Cork’s 96FM and C103 Cork.

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