Opening Reception Saturday 8 September, 5 – 7pm

Miller likens landscape to portraiture, and is consumed with the demands of addressing present reality, rather than something abstract. His work with landscape feeds off the intensity and immediacy of encountering the world at close quarters, and attempts to hold the urgency of that connection in paint.

Nick Miller’s landscapes painted from his mobile studio have been shown across the world to critical acclaim. The truck from which they are painted now sits immobile in what may be it’s final resting place; a steel yard at the back of his current studio, in the lee of the imposing and iconic mountain, Ben Bulben, in Co Sligo. Since moving to this studio in 2007, Miller has repeatedly returned to and painted this final ‘truck view’.

This show centres on a selection of new and unseen works that are focused on the mountain, the yard and the metal that lies in the foreground. In the contrast between metal and nature in Miller’s work, we are really confronted with wider questions of our relationship between Culture and Nature. The repeated cycles of life, growth and death are closer to real permanence than metal or machine. Beauty is found equally in the rusting man-made remnants of human construction, and in the rising mountain landscape of Ben Bulben. But in Miller’s work the pervading intensity of the natural world seems always to hold dominance over our temporary endeavours. We sense from the paintings, that whatever we do or try to do, it will, given time, be re-absorbed by the natural world.

Nick Miller was born in London, 1962 and moved to Ireland in 1984. He currently he lives and works in Co Sligo. He has exhibited in Ireland, Britain, the US and Netherlands, including solo shows at IMMA and the RHA. Solo exhibitions include; Painting Patrick: after Olympia & Venus, The Heritage Council, Kilkenny Arts Festival, (2011); Tree House 360˚, Curated by OH Projects, Boston: Concord Art Association, Concord, MA, USA; Rubicon Gallery Dublin (2010); Truckscapes – Paintings from a mobile studio, New York Studio School, New York; Rubicon Gallery, Dublin; Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick (2008); Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2007). His works are included in major public and private collections in Ireland, Europe and Asia. Nick Miller is a member of Aosdána, and is represented by Rubicon Gallery http://www.rubicongallery.ie

* Please note that the exhibition officially opens on Saturday 8 September. The exhibition will be hung a week in advance for press previews.