Harland Miller (b. 1964) occupies a position in British art that is entirely his own — a novelist who became a painter, a painter who uses books as his primary subject, and a wit who has found in the vintage Penguin paperback cover the perfect vehicle for some of the sharpest cultural commentary in contemporary art.
Born in Yorkshire and trained at Chelsea School of Art, Miller published two novels before beginning the Penguin series in the early 1990s that would define his career. The format is simple and inexhaustible: the iconic Penguin design — orange band, penguin device, typeset title — appropriated and subverted with phrases that are simultaneously joke, slogan, and social observation. Hate's Outta Date, Whaling is Over if You Want It, I Told You I Was Ill: each title lands in a single second and then holds its ground against extended looking.
The paintings are large — the scale giving the typography the architectural authority it needs — and the technique is deliberately imperfect, the paint handling loose and gestural against the rigid grid of the book cover design. The tension between the two is precisely the point: the institutional format of the Penguin cover meeting the irreverence of someone who has read what's inside and decided to say something different on the outside.
Miller's works have sold at Christie's for over £325,000 and at Sotheby's for over £277,000. He is represented by White Cube and his collectors include Elton John, Ed Sheeran, and George Michael. His market is established, active, and moving consistently in one direction.
Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.
