Melissa Miller

Melissa Miller (born 1951) is an American painter. She was born in Houston, Texas, attended the University of Texas at Austin from 1969 to 1971, and received a B.F.A. from the University of New Mexico in 1974. She exhibited in both the 1983 Whitney Biennial and the 1984 Venice Biennale She taught at the University of Texas at Austin from 1998 until retiring in 2011, and continues to live and paint in Austin.

Leopard Dance by Melissa Miller, 1983, 60 x 80 in.

Her paintings have evolved from realistic action-packed images of wild and domestic animals, to allegories incorporating both realistic and supernatural creatures. Leopard Dance demonstrates the other-worldly nature, bold colors, and large scale of her paintings.

The Albright–Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY), the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, Texas), the Dallas Museum of Art, the El Paso Museum of Art, The Grace Museum (Abilene, Texas), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D. C.), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D. C.), the Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, Florida), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art are among the public collections holding works by Miller.

"Thematically, I wish my paintings to depict the many facets and layers of life and survival, of which I am a constant and curious observer."