Miles Elliott
Miles is a 21-year-old artist living in Essex, interested in the question of personal identity. They have always wondered what it is, philosophically, that separates their experiences from anyone else’s. This interest has been approached through theory and practice. Using tools from phenomenology to achieve an objective essence (epoché) and a painting practice of portraits and interiors which include both presence and absence, Miles questions the way things and events leave an impression within our consciousness.
The paintings themselves are made on sheets of glass. The surface holds a positive image and allows Miles to cut back through the paint to create a transparent or absent area, so creating barriers to habitual expectations and breaks in mutual understanding-the effect is to fracture our reading of the image. The visual language is derived from a number of sources, the precision of English miniatures mix with startling juxtapositions from surrealism to make a heady brew.
Miles is a 20-year-old artist from Essex, they are primarily interested in the exploration of the components of identity through association, mainly through acrylic paint though they also appreciate the simplicity of a pencil and paper.
In this series, Miles began to explore who they were in relation to plants and flowers they appreciated and admired. They studied the fragility of flowers grown in their front garden in a state of decay, questioning whether their degradation was a loss of a part of their own identity.
This triptych removes the subject from the painting to explore what it is about a person that creates identity in the mind of the viewer, whether that be the clothing, posture or even hair.
These pieces use colour to distance the artist from the memory behind them, both the ski slopes of Flaine and their secondary school respectively. They appreciate that the memories are likely rose-tinted and altered from reality, but nevertheless are significant enough to form part of their identity.
This triptych was born from the importance of where you live in building your reality. It's the place you come home to at the end of the day and is where many significant life events happen, as such it is a big part of Miles' sense of identity. These were painted from memory, so are also likely not 100% accurate, but that makes them more realistic; This is the image Miles has when they imagine these personal places.
Miles' current experience of the outside world, due to safety reasons amid the COVID-19 pandemic, is limited to their garden, their world is a limited one, but that in itself forms a personal experience conveyed by this painting.
