Diane Rosenstein Fine Art is pleased to announce “John M. Miller: All Or Nothing (At All),” an exhibition of paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist.  This is Mr. Miller’s first solo show with the gallery, and will include eight recent paintings as well as several important works from the artist’s personal collection, dating from the 1990s and not previously shown.

Mr. Miller’s paintings are meticulous and meditative compositions that gracefully articulate the nuances of a post-minimal world. Brushing acrylic paints over raw, unprimed canvas, the artist creates and recreates angled bars of color that comprise the unique structure of his idiosyncratic canvasses.  The signature interplay of long and short bars makes John Miller’s paintings easy to recognize, yet impossible to absorb in a single glance.   

John M. Miller began his unique practice of painting in the early 1970s, after an epiphany in Europe inspired him to abandon figuration and “picture-making”. 
He returned to California, and went into his MFA program with a portfolio of abstract drawings. “I wanted an art form that I could learn from, one that would continue to force me to learn new things about myself,” he states.  A few short years later, Miller’s canvases are exhibited at LACMA, in Stephanie Barron’s 1976 exhibition, New Abstract Painting in Los Angeles.

For the last thirty-seven years, John Miller has purely and persistently created these paintings. In his 1996 essay for the Modernism Gallery catalogue of Passage, David Pagel continues, “Almost like natural phenomena in their unconcern for personal whims and sentiments, these impersonal, magisterial paintings leave you free to make of them whatever you want, but always on their terms."

While he defies traditional art world labels, Miller’s geometric abstractions navigate the spiritual terrain inherent in Agnes Martin’s meditative compositions. But don’t call John M Miller a post-Minimalist. “I’m just a painter,” he explains, “and usually the first viewer of my work, but surely not the last.” 

John M. Miller (USA, b 1939) lives and works in Los Angeles. He attended San Diego State University (BFA, 1967) and took his MFA from Claremont (1972).  His paintings were recently included in Under The Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, (2011); and has been included in other important group exhibitions including Driven to Abstraction: Southern California and the Non-Objective World, 1950-1980, Riverside Art Museum (RAM), Riverside (2006); Departures: 11 Artists at the Getty, The Getty Center, Los Angeles (2000); and Less is More, Sidney Janis Gallery, New York (1977).  

Mr. Miller has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Painting (1993 & 1987). His paintings are in the permanent collection of
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (MCASD); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and The Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

John M. Miller: All Or Nothing (At All) opens Saturday, March 16^th with a reception for the artist from 6 – 8pm.  The exhibition will be on view through April 13^th.   Hours are Tues – Saturday, 10am – 6pm.  

For more information, please contact info@dianerosenstein.com