Opening:
• Saturday, May 13, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Exhibition Dates:
* May 13 - June 20

Sarah Shepard Gallery is delighted to welcome California-based artist Serena Mitnik-Miller for her third solo exhibition.

Working in her studio filled with Southern California light, Mitnik-Miller’s artistic practice is process oriented and guided by a meditative spirit. She plays with the balance of negative space, form and density in her signature minimalist and timeless style.

Serena Mitnik-Miller is known for her minimalist geometric compositions of interlocking patterns, lines, and organic, concentric shapes. She deftly uses subtle gradations of nature-inspired color — earth tones, grays, elemental blues, and greens — to suggest a kind of rhythmic liminal space, movement, and ongoing transition. Paradoxically, the compositions offer a sense of stillness as well.

For this exhibition, Mitnik-Miller dives deeper into her exploration of the square format, finding the possibilities of exploration within a consistently sized frame. Rather than confining or limiting, the square offers Mitnik-Miller the chance to play with balanced proportions, to reimagine designs or ideas that might earlier have been set within a rectangle.

The consistency of format creates connection but shows how different each individual piece can be. Similarly, she varies the amount of pigment in her colors, oscillating between barely there to deeper, more pronounced, discovering a sense of control within the notoriously elusive medium of watercolor.

Mitnik-Miller’s works evoke the natural world she chooses to live, work, and play within, reflecting the colors of California’s distinctive environment. The earth tones are inspired by the sandstone she lives among and greens by the abundant spring in California following the rain. A surfer, she’s viscerally influenced by water, sand, and light.

Born in Massachusetts, Mitnik-Miller moved with her family to Hawaii as a child. She earned a BA in Photography and Printmaking from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work was exhibited at the Bolinas Museum in West Marin in 2019.

A designer as well as a painter, Mitnik-Miller is the co-founder of General Store in San Francisco and Venice, CA, and the co-author of Abode: Thoughtful Living with Less. She was an artist-in-residence at Art Park in Byron Bay, Australia and her work has been extensively exhibited in New York, Tokyo and Australia. Mitnik-Miller is included in the Art In the Embassies collection in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.