Martha Miller 2006, Printmaking
In making a portrait, I attempt to reveal something of the psychological and emotional depth of the individual. I use bits of the surround room to set a stage, and the resulting work is influenced by many layers of stimuli including such factors as mood, conversation, images on the studio wall, music, and images from memory and dreams. I use all these scattered and changing sources much like a novelist to pull together a story on the page.
When people posed for my portrait series Portraits From My Father's Chair, they sat in a chair that had belonged to my late father. I dreamt that the chair broke into many pieces and collapsed from the weight of the dozens of models who sat for my portraits. The pieces of the broken chair then became a long, rectangular box, like a coffin. At the time I had this dream, I had been struggling to figure out what it was that I was trying to communicate in my portraits. Answers often come to me in dreams, and I read this dream as a message from Spirit, and from my father. What it told me is that a portrait captures a person in a moment in time, and then the moment is gone forever. Portraits From My Father's Chair is about a particular moment in time when I responded to my community with love, intuition and speed.

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