In 2022, two symbolic elements began to appear in my work: hexagon shaped beehive honeycombs and circles.
The job of and the rank of the Queen Bee for a hive colony is a parallel to my lifestyle since 2020. The Queen spends nine out of twelve months in hibernation. Hibernation keeps the Queen safe from the risk of predation, starvation and diseases.
Hibernation has been my life in isolation from both friends and family to protect both my gallery business (the hive) and my own health as an immune compromised person living with multiple auto immune conditions to prevent further complications from disease.
In the summer I enjoy working in solitude in the garden with the worker bees, providing food nourishment for my body and keeping active on our land in the country 'as busy as a bee'. In my work you can see the journey of the bees as they build their buzzz.
Without the Queen Bee, the bees in the hives do not survive more than a couple of weeks. If something was to happen to me, I feel that my business would collapse as there is no other Queen Bee to take over. The concept makes a Queen bee's life, parallel to how I feel in this world.
The circles represent our life cycle as humans and 'what goes around comes around' in life. I've been working through a period of “Letting Go” which connects to the birth of ideas, the growth of ideas, followed by the production of ideas to the later death of the idea once completed. In a few instances, the artwork doesn't work and is recycled into another concept.
Each piece created in this life cycle of current time plays an important role whether it is successful in finding a home or if it was created during a learning experience. Every piece is ultimately a part of my own artistic journey. As we age, we find ourselves in different stages of the life cycle and it seems that every few years my art has to go through a rebrand with the biggest being in the last few years of my career. Mediums and dominant colours have changed, paint application has gone through different waves of change. Blues, greens and purples have become more dominant and saturated in every work; reds, orange and yellows have taken a backseat; however, they do make an appearance from time to time.
Like an artist, a butterfly goes though a metamorphosis and four different stages of a life cycle from the egg, to the larva, then the pupa and then the adult stage. An artist goes through stages of a career from beginner to amateur to emerging, and then a full on professional. Currently, because I am collected by a wide range of strangers from people around the world, I believe that I am on the tail end of “Emerging” and at the very beginning of the “Professional” chapter. This is part of the artist life cycle. Will I ever feel like fully a professional artist? I think imposter syndrome will always keep me from fully reaching that cycle until I retire from the gallery and fully submerge myself into the full on artist career. I hope that cycle will be easier than the journey I've been on since 1997 when I first stepped into the BFA program at the university of Manitoba, School of Fine Art as an18 year old. At 45 later this year (2024), I have entered the middle aged part of my life cycle. I feel its time to fully emerge as an adult butterfly.
What is next? Only time will tell. Letting go is part one of what comes next. And the most common and looming life long question, remains an unanswered mystery - What comes first, the chicken or the egg? The gallery owner in me might still be the chicken, waiting for that egg to hatch.
Holding on to stress is incredibly damaging to our mind and body. Art has always been a source of therapy to push past chaos, disruption and destruction.
Creating this new body of work for “Letting Go” was about learning how to breathe, to stand on my own, to use my own voice and stop listening to the voices of others around me. “I am worthy. I am strong. I am beautiful.” is a mantra that many people remind themselves of daily. This feeling of Letting Go is absolutely freeing. When painting, it’s important to push stressful experiences away from my mind.
Standards of expectations that are “high bar”, tending to want to go ‘higher’. One wonders, does anyone benefit from living and working this way? Probably not. Look at every aspect of life, putting value on one’s health and experiences. In healing, it is important to let go of all of these self-expectations.
“Slow and steady wins the race.” Admittedly, chronic fatigue caught up to me in 2018. I am getting better. The healing is slow. Continuously I remind myself that I am a strong, level headed woman. I know how to stay no. I know what is no longer acceptable for me.
Come out and explore my new work, Letting Go. I promise a softness you’ve never seen before in my work! This ongoing pandemic has changed me in some of the most incredible ways. A calm, cool and collected version of Jordan Miller. I promise you, I struggled with this one but I am incredibly happy with the results.
I'd love to see you at my new exhibition featuring works created between September 2023-February 2024.
2024 Exhibition Info:
Letting Go: Exhibition & sale by Jordan Miller
Exhibition Dates: March 14 to April 2, 2024
Location: cre8ery gallery & studio, 125 Adelaide Street, 2nd floor, main gallery room.
Hours I'll be at the show: Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 5pm. Evenings by appointment for as late as 7pm. (Sunday & Monday also available with advance notice)
To purchase works online please email jordan@cre8ery.com or call 204-944-0809. Works will be available on the shopping cart of my website following the exhibition.
My price list (PDF) below gives you an idea of what is available at my exhibition. There is a list at the bottom for the works available in my studio as well as what is available at Pulse Gallery from my collection. Price list below was last updated on March 24th, 2024 at 8pm..