Karin Miller

I Kiss My Waiting Child

Nutritional Supplies

African Princess

Day Flying Insects of the Order Lepidoptera

Let’s Do Lunch

Natural Boyancy

I Wear My Mask for Warmth

Guess Who?

Artist Statement

My work is a visual play between beauty and tragedy, rhythm and interruption – searching for a sense of order in the overwhelming chaos of life. Two main metaphors I use are those of disguise and pattern. Apart from the obvious masks, I play games of hide and seek with the viewer. Issues are veiled; in the discovery of detail, deceit is revealed and absurdly inverted. My art deals with the typically South African ability to laugh at ourselves, and consequently, to play and take risk. Playfulness is seen in the variety of patterns. The first layer of observation reveals simple decorativeness, but closer looking introduces the heroes who are the personalities that are either super good or super bad. In this lie the acidic hero or smug tyrant and bedfellow of the sad footman. Celebrities and political figures form, in a broader sense, the wallpaper background of our lives. In masking a sense of defeat and despair, all is structured in order, attempting to create sanity and in this, beauty is given the trump card. Beauty affirms our sense of comfort, which is visualized by balance and symmetry and presents us with a sense of warm reassurance. However, my works simultaneously seek out comfort’s opposite side of uneasiness and thus creates tension – as a result a sting is revealed. My cloned icons are cyber creatures that are comfortable with their awkward antics. The play on sexuality and it’s striving towards physical perfection becomes not only seduction in the realm of personal politics but the mask of all our devious underhanded games. At times my characters exchange humble gifts, and in a way, I feel the stab at our bizarre world is the console I give myself.

Karin Miller’s Website