A day in the life of visual artist Tasha Miller
*Text and photos courtesy of Natasha Miller*
Natasha Miller has the type of artistic style that is so unique and distinctive that after seeing it once you would recognise it anywhere. Using charcoal and acrylic she paints ghostly black and white coastal scenes that have an eerie yet calm quality to them. Contrasting touches of red jump out from the canvas, boats or birds that seem to beg for their mysterious story to be told. Where are these places? What happened there? It turns out it is usually the coast of Deer Island and probably nothing much other than the tides. Tasha takes these already beautiful scenes and brings a whole new air to them, like film noir of painting. Tasha had been interested in drawing and painting since she was a child and even had her sights set on attending Emily Carr University, but decided to travel instead. After travelling for 10 years throughout Europe, South and Central America, she settled on Deer Island with her husband, Cody. It was there, tucked away on the coast of the Bay of Fundy that she rediscovered her love for making art. It happened slowly at first, but in what is a relatively short period in artist-years, Tasha has created a recognizable aesthetic and a reputation for quality work. She sends her work to nearly a dozen shops/galleries and has earned a spot at the the Artist Project in Toronto. No small feat!
I very much wanted to visit Tasha’s studio, but winter combined with distance proved it challenging. So when someone suggested to me I try featuring a day in the life of an artist, I thought she would be perfect! Tasha was enthusiastic about documenting her daily routine and sharing it with the CreatedHere community, and I have to say that I love her photos and captions. Thank you Tasha for sharing your day and your photos with us. Good luck in Toronto!
Waking up on Deer Island is wonderful. I’m usually up long before the sunrise and it gives me lots of time to snap some sunrise pictures from our deck and get inspired by Mother Nature!
Now I wait for the sun to rise. My living room doubles as my studio and maybe it’s the charcoal, but I definitely need full daylight to paint. I make green tea and then coffee, and get set up to paint.
My studio assistant Francis is always underfoot, I mean supervising my workspace...
I use almost every single one of these brushes in each painting, between my dry charcoal washes and acrylic details. It makes for a lot of cleanup!
Huge canvas in the living room. Our house was built in 1890 and there is such a spirit to it. I'm convinced there is a ghost in the house. Almost every day either a paintbrush or a ruler or pencil go missing and I find them in the weirdest places, or they reappear right when I need it.
Me painting in the living room/studio. When I work I love listening to vinyl records. Right now I'm listening to lots of Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Elliot Smith. I love the sense of calm that painting gives me; I literally shut down and go into this "zone" almost like a meditation.
Lunchtime! My husbands a chef so I eat well. Today it's caprese grilled cheeses with fresh mozzarella and celery sticks. The bread is no-knead. There is something so satisfying about homemade bread.
Every day we go for a walk or a drive. It's hard not to get inspired on the island, there are so many bays, harbours and beaches. I'm inspired by silhouettes, I see them everywhere. I usually mash up all these things and combine them in my paintings....sometimes I add in a BC tree :)
Lord’s cove at twilight. I always have a camera with me so that when I see something I like, a tree, a bird in a tree, an anchored boat or the way the sun is making certain shadows, I can take a picture and incorporate it in a painting.
I paint this beach a lot- this weir once belonged to my husbands grandmother....
I'm frantically getting ready for The Artist Project, a contemporary art fair happening in Toronto in February. Every waking daylight hour is spent painting right now. That's one of the beauties of Deer Island and its seclusion, I can just be a hermit and devote myself to my art. I'm also busy getting ready to send stock to some new galleries that will now be carrying my art in Hillsborough, Halifax, Victoria, BC and one in The Chesapeake Bay region.
I've had so many canvases coming and going lately that the dining room is now shipping and receiving central. Last night I received the last of my Toronto canvases and now it's time to dive in and get ‘er done!
Another perk of living on Deer Island, you eat a lot of fresh seafood! Deer Island has delicious fresh scallops, lobster, herring, mackerel, shrimp, sea urchin, periwinkles, mussels, clams and I'm sure I'm missing a few others. Supper tonight are scallops fresh-caught from the ocean today. I love trading art for seafood, which is a bonus for us!
Our other business is carting a wood-fired pizza oven to farmers’ markets from May until October. The pizza oven is 3000 lbs, heats to 1000 degrees and cooks a cheese pizza in 60 seconds. I harvest the charcoal from the oven for my paintings.
Every day while I'm busy painting, my husband is busy renovating a waterfront store we bought here on Deer Island. We don't quite know what it's going to be yet, right now it is looking like a studio/gallery/ wood fired bakery .I stroll down here most days to stretch my legs and check on progress of the place. Stay tuned!
Thanks so much Tasha! Find out more about Tasha below: