‘Paton Miller: Around the World in 40 Paintings’

Oscar Molina Gallery in Southampton opens a new exhibition, “Paton Miller: Around the World in 40 Paintings,” a selection of current works by this noted artist who has resided in Southampton for nearly five decades. The show runs November 18 to January 9 and it opens with a reception on Saturday, November 19, from 5 to 7 p.m. On Sunday, November 27, Miller will give an Artist’s Talk at the gallery at 2 p.m.

Born in Seattle and raised in Hawaii, Paton Miller studied at the Honolulu Academy of Arts then found his way to Southampton in 1974 after year-long travels around the world. Here, he pursued fine art studies at Long Island University Southampton College, graduating in 1978. He became acquainted with an artistic circle on the East End that included Fairfield Porter’s widow, Anne. He would paint in the late Porter’s studio for over 20 years and established deep roots in this community.

While Miller has led a vibrant, peripatetic life — much of which has been lived by the water — he has remained profoundly tied to his family history and the place he considers to be home. World travel, self-knowledge, identity, and sense of place combine and motivate a unique style that involves exploration of materials and process through figure and landscape, painting and drawing, as well as abstraction and fragmentation that inhibits pure representation and straightforward narrative interpretation.

Among the paintings on view is a mural-like piece called “The Day’s Catch” (2022), worked in oil and epoxy on canvas and panel. Like another piece, the oil on panel entitled “Giants” (2022), it features a consistent motif in Miller’s work, that of “man on the water.” “The Day’s Catch” also depicts a variety of drawn and painted objects, including a hammer, nails, and a frame structure, which could allude to the artist’s experience as a builder/contractor. These elements might also suggest the early, childhood influence of classical animated cartoons, which he attributes as influential to his pursuit of art. Overall, Miller’s artwork transmits an aura of adventure, discovery, and enchantment.

Those are key qualities in the small works ingeniously framed and boxed in apiary materials — beehive frames and boxes. The intimate paintings are discrete vignettes that individually stand alone or, when grouped on a wall, create a flow of images that compel the eye to travel from one to another, as also occurs in many of Miller’s larger works. At once refined and rustic, the boxed works incite curiosity and invite one to explore a “treasure chest” of drawn and painted imagery.

Oscar Molina Gallery is at 28C Jobs Lane, Southampton. For more information, visit oscarmolinagallery.com or call 631-905-7673.