Susan Miiller

Women & Their Work presented On Becoming, a series of large-scale paintings by Texas artist Susan Miiller.

Susan Miiller used a type of subtractive method of painting in both her series: Earth History, and For Men Only and For Women Only.

In the Earth History series, anthropological and art historical themes were combined to depict the history of our planet and its fragile nature. Miiller’s second series, For Men Only and For Women Only, derived inspiration from Dave Hickey’s article, “Community Property and the Eye of the Beholder.” Miiller interpreted different art genres from the last 400 years and equated them with gender. She depicted the Renaissance as recessive, “female” space and considered Baroque to be aggressive, “male” space. In her paintings, Miiller used both kinds of space to show gender separations and their spatial counterparts.

Highlights from both of these series were featured in On Becoming. Miiller’s method often begins with ideas from her collage works on paper and then she transfers the idea in oil onto canvas.