43 paintings?, where have we been? Slinging paint or something like that. Thing of the day? An Organ Thing of The Day?  How about some new Harland Miller? There’s something very heart-warming about an old Penguin paperback book. Hang Up gallery have just brought this health and safety issue to our attention

“Harland Miller is both a writer and an artist, practising both roles in Europe and America.  After living and exhibiting in New York, Berlin and New Orleans during the 80s and 90s, Miller achieved critical acclaim with his debut novel, ‘Slow down Arthur, Stick to Thirty’ (2000); the story of a kid who travels around northern England with a David Bowie impersonator; In the same year he published a small novella, First I was Afraid, I was Petrified, based on the true story of a female relative with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, discovered when Miller came across a box full of Polaroid images she had taken of the knobs of a cooker. In 2001 Miller produced a series of paintings based of the dust jackets of Penguin books. By combining the motif inherent in the Penguin book, Miller found a way to marry aspects of Pop Art, abstraction and figurative painting at once, with his writer’s love of text. The ensuing images are humorous, sardonic and nostalgic at the same time, while the painting style hints at the dog-eared, scuffed covers of the Penguin classics themselves. Miller continues to create work in this vein, expanding the book covers to include his own phrases, some hilarious and absurd, others with a lush melancholy…..”

And while you’re here enjoying a digital image of one of Harland Miller’s beautifully painted book covers, here’s another 43 paintings that have passed thorough these pages in recent times. Well maybe not 43 and maybe not all paintings, near enough 43 though, maybe a few more, mostly paintings though… Do like a bit of Mr Miller..

Click on an image to enlarge or to run the slide show….