My other Journal

Just in case there is anyone that has not noticed yet, I started a new blog a little over a month and a half ago.  It's www.MaxMillerPaintings.blogspot.com and it's linked up on my main website as well.  The basic premise is that every day I paint a small painting that goes up for sale.  The first to contact me about it gets it.  I've already gotten a great response on these little paintings that are super affordable and a bit whimsical.  Check them out.

Dr. Askins Final

Here is the finished Dr. Askins portrait and a picture of the unveiling of the final painting at Dr. Askins's retirement party.  He was happy with it, so I was happy with it.

More Bonfire Pictures

I was up until four and the fire was still burning strong.  Here's a picture of the aftermath the next day also, still smoldering.

The Bonfire

Last week I had the pleasure of going to a bonfire party thrown by my good friend Doug Ballantine in Greensboro, NC.  He'd been building this bonfire pile for quite awhile out on the land he owns.  Doug burns a good fire every two years or so and the one he did before this one burned for nine days.  It was a great time and a perfect night for it.  The flames reached at least twenty feet in the air and the fire department stopped by to make sure everything was smooth.

Traveling....

I'll be in New York for the next week or so visiting the Met and picking up some paintings/drawings. There may not be updates during that time, or there might be.

Pandora state 2

Here's an update on the Pandora painting.  There's actually not a whole lot more to do, just work in the cloth and legs, hands and the smoke/etc coming out of the box.  Unfortunately this will have to be put on the backburner for a little while while I sort out some commissions.

Army Wives in Charleston

So last Thursday I had the chance to be an extra on the set of Army Wives.  It was a pretty long day, about 9 or 10 hours, and it seemed they may have only gotten 5 minutes of footage out of the whole thing.  I'd been on sets before, so I knew how much work went into just a tiny scene, but it was cool to see it again.  I was dressed as an Iraqi street vender.  What!? You may say, well, I had a fairly long beard at the time, and a head wrap and they darkened my skin.  The beard is gone now by the way.  Anyway, I didn't have my camera that day, but here's a group of photos I took yesterday of the area in North Charleston where the scene was shot.  It was dressed up as an outdoor bazaar in Iraq where a shooting took place.  I had a few different background roles I had to fill including a fruit vendor, shopper and baby goat herder.  There's a picture of blank shells, holes in the wall where some errant bullets were supposed to have hit and two of the gunpowder squib balls used for creating gunshot holes.

Prepping a new canvas

This is a huge (though it doesn't look that big in this picture) canvas, 64 x 44, that I've been preparing for a portrait of my mother.  Here I'm painting rabbit skin glue onto the raw canvas to get it ready for the next step, gesso.  The rabbit skin glue is used as an isolation, or size that separates the canvas from the gesso as they don't play well together long-term.  It also tightens the canvas down onto the strainer support.

Pandora Early State

Here's an image of an early version of my Pandora painting, it's fairly large as the figure is near life-size. There's still quite a bit of work to be done on figure, background, box, well...everything. But you can see what I'm going for here - a quiet, intimate moment where Pandora has found a hiding place to open the box alone.

Pandora/Eve Precurser

So a few months ago I had the inspiration to begin a painting based on the Greek Myth of Pandora. I've always been intrigued by the story and I found a model who was into the idea so we came up with a pose and began the painting. If you don't know the myth of Pandora, this is taken from wikipedia:

In Greek Mythology, Pandora was the first woman. Each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to mould her out of Earth as part of the punishment of mankind for Prometheus' theft of the secret of fire , and all the gods joined in offering this "beautiful evil" seductive gifts. According to the myth, Pandora opened a jar, in modern accounts referred to as "Pandora's Box", releasing all the evils of mankind— greed, vanity, slander, envy, pining— leaving only hope inside once she had closed it again.

What the above excerpt doesn't mention is that Pandora had no prior knowledge of what was in the box, she was merely told that she 'shouldn't open it.' As you may imagine, many artist have been inspired to create images of Pandora in the past. Of course on occasion there may have been that propensity for artists to want to paint a Pandora image as a knock against a cruel lover, or maybe an unattainable, thus 'evil' woman in their life. As you can see, the blaming of women for the worlds evils is not a new idea, even in the age when the Bible was written. Of course that's ludicrous, who wouldn't open the jar/box if it was given to them?

Here are a few examples of works focusing on Pandora, including one by Rossetti and another more contemporary one by Boris (heh). My favorite has always been the Arthur Rackham one (bottom right), you might recognize his work from Alice in Wonderland.

Portrait of Margaret Andrews

Here's an image of the latest portrait commission I completed for the Andrews family in Lynchburg, Virginia. There's also an early version of it when it was about halfway finished, you can see how far it came along. I think they were pretty happy with it. Take note, my shop is always open for commissions.

Saint John: State One

Here's the first update on the St. John painting.  Just trying to work out the broad shapes/tones right now.  I haven't worked on the chalice yet, as you can see, it's not in the painting.

The Mystery Painting part 1

This is kind of an experiment.  Here's the underlayer I prepared yesterday, there will be more as I spin it out.

St. John III...Return of the Evangelist

Here is an image of the chosen goblet prop for the painting.  I wanted something a little modern-ish, so it's partly glass, and it's blue.  The background will be this nice forest green cloth that I found on a moving truck one time in Boston, I think it's a tablecloth.  Also, I have here a quick one hour painting sketch of Dave/Santa.  I'll probably give this sketch a little more attention, maybe another hour to get it to a point that I really like it, as the larger canvas for the final painting still needs some time for the underpainting to dry.

St. John...the continuation

So here I have a quick study of a man named David who is a 'professional Santa.'  He'll be the St. John in the upcoming painting.  I've also included two images of the prepared canvas.  One is a detail of the other.  Most of the fancy abstract work on here will be covered up as the painting takes shape, but it's still fun to see.

St. John/ The Poisoned Chalice/ The Best Way To Make Your Drink Safe

About a year ago I had a show in Lynchburg, Virginia in a Church with a very nice gallery housed inside it.  The Church is St. John's and the gallery is the Fauber Gallery .  I was brought into the gallery by the Rector Michael Sullivan, and it turned out to be a great show.  My original intention was to make a work specifically for the church show, a portrait of St. John.  St. John is traditionally depicted as conjuring  a serpent from a cup.  Apparently the Emperor Diocletian offered St. John a cup of poisoned wine.  St. John diverted disaster by turning the poison into a snake that slithered away (another biblical casting of snakes as villains, poor snakes).  This of course interested me and I thought it would be great to create a work of my own on this subject.  I'm drawn to the conjuration aspect of it, but I feel that none of the paintings I've found have struck me as amazing depictions.  Unfortunately at the time of the show I was pressed to get everything else together and the St. John painting was the first to get cut.  But, recently I've been playing with the idea to make this painting.  And since the idea has stayed around for a year, I thought I'd go for it.  Pictured here are some of the earlier representations I could find of St. John and said serpent, one by El Greco, another by Alonso Cano (my favorite of the bunch) and I'm unsure of the origin of the other two, though one of them appears to be a very early damaged illustration on a wall.  I'm particularly drawn to this precisely because it hasn't been depicted too many times, there is no iconic image of this story.  So...onward.

What's this for?

Sorry, it's a surprise... Everyone will have to just wait to find out what this is for....

The NEW STUDIO

So, as you can see, it's been quite awhile since I've updated here.  But here I am again.  This is an image of where my new studio is, on the Old Naval Base in North Charleston.  That's right I'm back in Charleston, at least for the next year and a half.