Colin Miller Artist Statement

My work is political, yet still fundamentally humanistic. Because politics are present in all human interactions, the issues that I address are not simply political, they are human. The political nature of my artwork comes not only from the subjects it treats, but also because I believe it to be a species of political action.

Years of acting experience have left me with an intense interest in representing human personality types. These types recur again and again, and I seek to represent them in my work, making the work both novel yet familiar. Though it is a new vision, it is peopled with persons we all recognize. Using self-portraiture as methodology, I become at once artist, subject, and activist. And because I portray all characters, the differences in these portrayed figures become a matter of role: what they do and what they look like. This leads to a paradoxical duality: they are all the same person, yet they are all different.

I can transform myself into the moralist politician or the talking head who becomes an arbiter of values or a broker of credibility. Using historical materials, I synthesize the real and the imagined to encourage new insight.