Drawing on decades of experience as a painter, graphic designer, and musician, Steve Miller (not that Steve Miller) creates expressive, immersive narrative landscapes in oil and acrylic.
Miller showed an early talent for music, and after his first concert, Van Halen touring behind 1984, he was set on becoming a professional rock star. He formed and played drums in bands as a teenager and through college, becoming a sought-after, hard-hitting alt-rock drummer. While chasing that dream, he worked at a t-shirt print shop, designing flyers and merch for local bands and friends in his free time. It was his introduction to graphic design. None of it, though, could pull him away from his deep love of telling personal stories through painting. Visual art was a solo endeavor. He didn't have to rely on bandmates sharing his work ethic, and he came to savor the long stretches of deep creative focus.
After earning a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Oklahoma in 1995, Miller spent several years as an art director at advertising agencies in Dallas and Chicago while developing his fine art practice, then moved to Michigan in 2002 to pursue his art career full-time.
As an independent artist, Miller has shown in over 70 local and regional exhibitions and won a handful of awards, including the 2019 Corinne Maillard Robinson Award from the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center for his painting Stasis Hiatus. That same year, his painting Ben Jamin was selected for the Art Explored program, with an outdoor reproduction displayed publicly in downtown Royal Oak. In 2014, the Detroit Institute of Arts exhibited Ofrenda to Robin Williams, his collaborative sculpture with artist Alex Goecke. Over the years he has donated paintings to communities and causes he supports, and has served as a curator and juror for exhibitions across Southeast Michigan. He teaches oil painting at the Atelier School of Art in downtown Royal Oak, where he also works as Studio Coordinator, and, when asked, designs logos and brand identities for creative entrepreneurs.
In his downtime, he loves hanging with his wife and nearly grown daughters, and writing, recording, and performing with his bands Raccoon Dogs and Covid Bros. around metro Detroit.
