State of mind

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This article was published 14/03/2024 (574 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jordan Miller’s paintings have something in common with mood rings, those kitschy ornaments of the 1970s.

According to creative advertising, the jewelry changed colour along with the feelings of the wearer. In reality, the “mood stones” were only temperature-sensitive thermochromic cells and held no emotionally related properties.

Miller’s works, on the other hand, provide a more precise gauge of her state of mind.

The artist, owner and executive director of the Cre8ery gallery compared Letting Go, her latest collection of works that opens today at the Adelaide Street studio, with her paintings from 2015, her last solo exhibition at Cre8ery.

She was startled with the change in feelings they reveal.

“The artwork is so different. It’s a complete flip,” Miller says. “I see red and orange as angry and aggressive colours now, but before I used to love them. Everything was very vibrant; it was like the room was vibrating and there was tension and you could feel it.”

Miller lets go of the pressure, as well as those hot colours, in Letting Go, which includes predominantly blue- and green-coloured conceptual abstracts with a more soothing quality.

“I still see some tension in the work, but it’s not like before. There’s a softness to the work that I quite enjoy. A change in colour palette, a change in perspective and a change in life, trying to drop the stress that’s around me,” she says.

Miller also uses honeycombs and circles as motifs throughout the exhibition, especially in the acrylics Mapping the Hive Mind and Hibernation, and has become so fascinated with a bee’s life she explains how important they are to her in a blog post titled The Queen Bee and the Circle of Life (jordanlmiller.com).

Many bee species hibernate, and Miller, 44, says hibernation has been a key part of her life recently, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic began four years ago.

She already had Type 1 diabetes and auto-immune conditions before learning in 2018 she has chronic fatigue syndrome. She contracted shingles a year later, and the effects of all her health challenges have made hosting gallery events difficult.

So when the coronavirus threat eased later in 2020 and Miller was able to open Cre8ery again, she gladly joined the province’s mask mandate. She recommends gallery visitors wear masks in 2024 and provides them for visitors who don’t have one handy.

“I feel like another thing added on will destroy me, and that’s why I relate so well to the queen bee,” says Miller, who is one of the lucky few not to have contracted COVID in the past four years.

“She needs to protect herself to keep the hive going. I equate the hive to Cre8ery and the need to protect myself and the business because if I go down, the whole place goes down.”

The painter no longer holds receptions for new shows other than the monthly First Fridays in the Exchange, choosing instead to invite potential clients individually to decrease the threat of contracting the virus.

“It wasn’t until we were told to go into lockdown that I really started to assess what I needed to change. People think it’s about COVID, but it’s not. I don’t think I could stand from 11 o’clock in the morning till 10 o’clock like I used to and then drive home,” Miller says.

Another aspect of Letting Go was a plan to leaving other styles of art behind, such as alcohol-ink works, which Miller is also known for.

But she’s found letting go isn’t as easy as it sounds.

She’s using a second room at Cre8ery for her alcohol-ink paintings, some of which were part of the Pulse Gallery show Journey to the Stars in October. They are also abstracts coloured mostly in blue.

“I was asking people who know me and know my work if I should do alcohol inks for that small back room and they all said, ‘You need to do alcohol-inks; people need to know that’s you.”

Miller dreams of one day being at her easel more often, focusing on her own work.

She soldiers on in the meantime and will be at her post at Cre8ery throughout Letting Go’s run, which ends April 2, and for future shows by other artists.

“It’s been a really tough time for me to accept what I am capable of doing, and so when I’m in the studio, it makes me happy,” she says. “That’s the place I want to be in when I want to create joyful moments.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall