Exploration of Contentment, Solo Exhibition by Jordan Miller BLOG, Statement & bio.
Updated: Sep 17
September 14 - October 22, 2026
Prairie Fusion, Arts & Entertainment, Portage La Prairie, Manitoba
11- 2nd street NE
204-239-6029 / info@prairiefusion.ca
*free to attend, no admission fee.
Reception: Sunday, September 20, 1-4pm; Artist Talk 2pm
Informal Meet the Artist: Saturday, October 17, 1-4pm
Regular Hours: Monday to Wednesday, 10am to 4pm; Thursday 10-7pm
This exhibition features both acrylic paintings & alcohol ink and acrylic ink paintings. My work has evolved stylistically in the last six months. Rediscovering and exploring the realms of abstraction, keeping the work playful, bringing some colour back! Below is my more formally written exhibition statement, a more personal blog entry about the connection to the title of the art and my personal life story and why the show was given this title. Each piece was created by using all three brains, my physical mental brain organ, my metaphorical emotional heart organ, and my metaphorical intuition gut organ.
Official Brief Exhibition Statement:
An inner voice emerged as Exploration of Contentment unfolded. Intuitive abstraction came to life. Paintings developed personalities through colour, line, and mark-making.
Light and dark tones appeared like shifting emotions, similar to the way a person processes challenges or reflects on past conversations. Discovering forgiveness, moving beyond identifiable loss, a contemplative yet positive tension exists. Layers are built up and swiped away. Vibrant, subdued, and translucent colours create visual harmony.
The quiet solitude of creating is both restorative and energizing, providing a fulcrum of balance within an abstracted mind filled with noise.
Exploration of Contentment reflects on resilience and acceptance, inviting viewers to consider their own relationship with the subtle ways contentment can coexist with uncertainty, change, and the complexities of modern life.
(see "blog" below for a longer statement)
Blog Life Story associated with this exhibition
Subtly this exhibition contains abstracted glimpses of nature, a shining light through the trees, shadows on the forest floors, mossy rocks, warm autumn colours -- a little pumpkin spice -- right though to the warmth of my grandfather's plaid shirts as well as an abstracted visual story of reimagining how the cow escaped from the pasture. Some paintings are of stormy days with small lifts of light and joy. Paths pave the way for the lost and weary. Abstracted expressions are both joyful and exploratory even on some of the darkest days. Dancing to music was a part of the process. Ethereal Bjork being one of my favorites right to the classics by Beethoven.
This exhibition contains an emotional processing, stepping away from what I once loved towards where I am. To be fully content, doing what I feel is right for who I am, is still a challenge. Stresses exist no matter how much I try to push them away. The works in the exhibition express a release of those struggles more than a struggle, if that makes sense?
Throughout my first 45 years of my life (now, 47), life has felt like I should be presenting myself in a way that related to others and their own experiences like we are one of the same. Selling art commercially in galleries is more challenging because I do not create art in a style that uses reference photos, I use my imagination.
A question often asked in the game of "Twenty Questions" during long cross-country road trips with family, doesn't sum up my art, my art is not an "animal, vegetable, or a mineral". Abstract doesn't have to always be something that exists in true form but may naturally have those references due to exposure of what already exists. Even as an artist I struggle with this because others have tried to convince me that art should be more recognizable to be considered a skill. I've even heard that others have said the words, 'anyone can do that'. "Please try to create with alcohol inks not in the form of a marker...", is my response.
Categorizing abstract art as an object has been a mind trap. I do not want to paint specific buildings or scenes, birds, animals, flowers, trees, canoes and still life-artwork. I want to use my imagination and creativity to be felt through the experience others have when viewing my work; their own interpretation of experience. I want to create something that nobody else has on their walls as a vibe. The raw truthful emotion, art that makes a person imagine and dream. There are no prints made of my work (just a few cards to promote my work) as I want people to have a piece from that moment in time an experience or an expression that exists only as one.
Some background to my thoughts today...
As a toddler, I was unlike my older sister. She was a reader. At two years old she fixed the telephone. Our parents were very young when we were born. Toys were luxury items. As a toddler, I dragged the pots and pans from the cupboard to build city structures, a place for my creative mind to explore. Regular household items became my toys, forts made with blankets and chairs. This is where my creativity started. At least these are my first memories.
When I was 8 years old, my grade three teacher told us it was time to 'catch up'. I giggled and imagined the slow flow of ketchup - tomato sauce coming out of the bottle. I didn't know the term 'to catch up.' French fries were a delightful treat. I don't imagine the other children understood my laughter. This was the first time that I realized I had a different visual mind than the academic mind my peers seemed to have. Perhaps this was a learning disability or just the mind of a creative learner.
When it became time to learn to paint, it was to have quiet time to keep my blood sugar levels steady as a person with type 1 diabetes. I painted realism (as best as I could at that time). I realized how many shades of green and brown you could make and how frustrating painting trees with leaves really was.
When I was a teenager, I hung out with my parents and their friends, listening to their life stories and experiences while my school peers were partying. I wasn't attracted to the same life style other teenagers were, there was no popularity contest of who became the most intoxicated for me. I feel the same about being an artist now. Popular trends of working in alcohol ink, you won't find in an exhibition that I have created.
When I was in university, our professor assigned a self-portrait assignment, expecting us to paint ourselves. I painted myself as a green alien with a UFO floating above my head, a spot light, highlighting the light on my face. The name of the UFO wrapped around its curvature was BFA, U of M, 2001. I never felt like I was in the right place as a student, the academic side of me has never had the focus the other students had. I felt insecure as an artist as I did not have the early artist skill training the other artists had. I grew up in a small town where the art program ended in grade 9.
When it came time to have a post-BFA (honours) grad career, my peers went on to be art teachers, find jobs in museums/galleries, or work in other industries. Very few continued with their art, I am one of the few who did. I established three gallery businesses 2002-2025, the last one was completely my own doing once the wall structures were built.
In 2001, a professor in my Bachelor of Fine Arts studies, Sharon Alward, reminded me to "make art about what I know, not what I don't know." She taught me that my own experiences were valid to express as a concept. I have created art throughout my life with that in mind. The audience doesn't need to know exactly what I am expressing in my work; however, I assure you that making art about my own experience is still very valid. I often wonder if I would sell more art if I returned to painting more realistic art. Cringe thinking.
When I closed the gallery, between my medical disabilities and complete administrative burn out, I was completely incapacitated. I see it now like a lit up neon sign from a distance. I am still recovering. At the peak of battling the worst of my health it was 'easiest' to create abstract landscapes that were grass, sky, water, land. My new found energy is placed into my newest creations.
As I've become stronger, my work has taken on a new abstract approach with more translucent layers, stacked to allow the colours to blend into each other. If my art was an onion, you could peel back the layers to expose the under colours. For example, I may have started a piece with yellow and layered a shade of fushia on top, in the spots where the yellows were, it is now a soft orange. Alcohol inks do not fully dry into the on yupo paper, they are floating on top.
I see the layers in my art as layers hiding truthful thoughts. I've allowed those layers to remain present, contributing to the flow of my thought process.
For several years leading up to 2026, I was unable to stand at my easel. I transitioned completely to alcohol inks in early 2024. It took a long time to recover from the all encompassing health challenges. A full recovery will never happen as I am medically disabled... although, I am strong and determined to keep going as always.
For this exhibition, in fall of 2025 I gave Lee Beaton, the gallery programmer the title, Exploration of Contentment, not knowing what I was going to create - confident I was going to feel more like myself. I'm please to say, I am and the body of art is a true reflection of that.
This work speaks to the day to day contentment to be alive, to be working, to be present in my studio again. Being able to work is an absolute gift. Darkness creeps in and I bring work back into the light again. Layers are built up and then taken away. Thoughts and feelings have found their way back into the work. This is contentment. I had to look it up in the dictionary. Being satisfied is contentment. That is exactly how I feel about this exhibition and where I am at as an artist.
Artist Biography:
Jordan Miller, an artist living and working in Manitoba, Canada, graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts honours from the University of Manitoba in 2002. She graduated with an Arts and Cultural Management diploma from the University of Winnipeg in 2008. Jordan was the founder and owner of cre8ery for 19 years, retiring and permanently closing in May 2025.
Jordan was the recipient of the 35th Annual Woman of Distinction Award for the arts in 2011. She was one of three finalists for the Future Leaders of Manitoba Awards (2015).
Jordan is a volunteer board co-chair at Artists AccessAbility Network Manitoba. She advocates for artists with invisible disabilities as an artist with a medically disabling condition.
She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Pulse Gallery, Birchwood Gallery, Fleet Galleries, cre8ery, Gallery Lacosse, Urban Shaman, Gallery 111, outworks, Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Gallery in the Park, Prairie Fusion, 210 Gallery, and Golden Prairie Arts Council, MAWA and many other places in the last 23 years.
She is an active member of Manitoba Society of Artists, Creative MB, MB Arts Network, Artists AccessAbility Network MB, aceart and Mentoring Art for Women’s Art.
She is collected across North America and internationally, by the Province of Manitoba and by incorporated businesses.
LINKS TO MEDIA ARTICLES:
**All works available for purchase, please see Exhibition Price List below.
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