Harland Miller was born in York in 1964 and currently lives and works in London and Yorkshire. After completing an MA in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art & Design he moved to New York, where he lived and worked for several years.
Read MoreIn 1992 he moved back to Europe, first to newly reunified Berlin where he began writing. By 1994 he was living and working in Paris, where he exhibited at the Galerie Louis XIV. After more extensive travels Miller eventually returned to the UK in 1996 where he carried on writing as well as painting.
In 2001 he achieved critical acclaim for his debut novel Slow Down Arthur, Stick To Thirty and in 2002 he occupied the Writer in Residency post at the ICA. This was followed by his first one-man show, To Jean – A Small Memento of a Great Effort, at the White Cube Gallery in 2003. Miller combined both writing and painting when he curated a group show at the White Cube gallery, You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil, in 2009, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe. As well as writing fiction he is a regular contributor to the Observer and the Guardian.
His paintings of books simultaneously provide a subject for the painter and an outlet for the writer. They combine the emotive possibilities of abstract expressionism with the quick punch of words to deliver their message, and for all the macho grist of their making, and often overwhelming scale, they somehow express a frailty that hints at the human condition. As Miller has said: "Painting is the worst medium to express narrative, but perhaps the best to hit a nerve."
Recent solo exhibitions include, The Next ife’s On Me, White Cube (2012), LAB, Beirut (2011) and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2009). Miller published his first novel, Slow Down Arthur, Stick to Thirty, to critical acclaim, in 2000 and was writer in residence at the ICA in 2002.
Harland Miller's works switch between being sardonic, hilarious and nostalgic as his own phrases replace the original titles of Penguin books.