BOOK:Harland Miller-XXX, Phaidon Publications

“XXX” by Phaidon Publications is the first book to focus exclusively on Harland Miller’s popular series of “Letter” Paintings. Infused with irreverent wit and shaped by his love of language, Harland Miller’s playful and graphically vernacular paintings have an enduring appeal. The  book includes more than 100 artworks alongside new photography of the artist in his studio, offering a unique view into Miller’s world. Artist and writer Harland Miller’s polychromatic and graphically vernacular paintings have garnered a devoted following. Infused with irreverent northern English humour and refined by his lifelong love of language, Miller’s work synthesises references from both high and low culture, spanning literature, music, self-help manuals and medieval iconography. Attesting to his deep-rooted engagement with the narrative, aural and typographical possibilities of language, Miller expressed, “People read before they can stop themselves, it’s automatic. Words offer a way into what you’re looking at, but no matter how integrated the text is, no matter how much you might think it’s synthesised into the painting, there is this imbalance in terms of how much the words are doing as words.”-Dimitris Lempesis