I create original mixed-media paintings and works on paper that are built slowly, intuitively, and with intention. My materials range from alcohol ink and fluid acrylic to gold leaf, organic elements, and found objects — coffee grounds, wax seals, coins, fragments of paper that have lived a life before they found their way onto a canvas. Each piece accumulates in layers until it tells me it’s finished.
Color and texture are my primary language. I don’t plan so much as I respond — adding, building, and discovering as the work evolves. Gold leaf and metallic materials appear throughout my work not as decoration, but as structure, light, and intention — marking the moment in a painting where something shifts.
My work is rooted in the landscape and creative spirit of Western North Carolina, where I have lived my whole life. My most recent project is taking a deeper turn, weaving together my original poetry and my art. A work in process, My Two Cents – Humanity’s Children, explores our collective humanity, what we have inherited as human beings, and where we go from here. These pieces will ask questions I think we all need to sit with right now: about what we carry forward, what we release, and what we have the courage to build it its place.
I want people who live with my work to keep discovering things in it: a color they hadn’t noticed, a texture that catches the afternoon light differently than it did in the morning. Art gave me a language I didn’t know I had, and every painting is another word in that conversation.
I am a native of Western North Carolina, rooted in the landscape and creative spirit of the Asheville area — a place that has shaped everything about how I see the world and make work within it.
My love of art is no surprise. I grew up surrounded by artistic and creative people. My mother was a painter and ceramics artist. My Uncle Harley was a well-respected local commercial artist whose talent I admired deeply. My Aunt Margaret was one of the most creative people I have ever known. She became my mentor, my encourager, and my first real creative mirror. All of them have passed now, but they live on in every piece I make.
In 2017, I retired early from a career in marketing with two goals: to travel the world with my husband, and to finally pursue the artistic life I had always quietly wanted. I was genuinely afraid I might have no aptitude for it. I had always doodled and drawn, but had never painted. So, I started my first painting with my aunt and two cousins by my side, offering guidance and encouragement. It wasn’t perfect but it just happened. Something unlocked.
In painting, I found a balm for my soul, a way to express myself, an outlet for a creativity that had been waiting a long time to find its full voice. I also found something unexpected: poetry. My developing work on the My Two Cents – Humanity’s Children series will show that I am not only a painter but a poet — and that the two are, for me, inseparable.
What began as a question — can I even do this? — has become the most honest conversation of my life. I haven’t stopped since.
Giving Back: The Miller Family Arts Education Scholarship
In 2023, in honor of the artists who shaped me, my family established the Miller Family Arts Education Scholarship.
My mother’s family — the Millers — were abundantly creative people who used their talents throughout their lives for the enjoyment of others and the betterment of their communities. Despite those gifts, formal arts education was never available to them. The scholarship exists to change that story for the next generation — to give creatively inspired young people the opportunity my family never had.
They were gone too soon, but their legacy is just getting started.