Hera's Milk, 2011

Miller's x-ray of a calla lily, shot with a New York Hospital's x-ray machine, uncovers the innards of the flower, rendering its essential elements visually accessible. Part of his series Health of the Planet, the work is an example of Miller's x-ray photographs of plants, flowers, and tropical fruits.

Hera's Milk is the beginning of Miller's investigation of the beauty and fleeting nature of our natural resources. Hera, the Greek goddess called the Queen of Heaven, was the wife of Zeus. She was the goddess of women and marriage, as well as the goddess of the sky and the star heavens. The word galaxy comes from the Greek word gala, meaning "mother's milk," and legend is that the Milky Way was formed from the milk spurting from the breasts of the Greek goddess Hera, Queen of Heaven. Where drops fell to earth, fields of lilies sprang forth.

Living and working between the Hamptons and New York since the 1970s, Steve Miller is best known for his paintings, which combine aspects of art, science, and technology. From realist painter to installation artist, to "genetic portraitist," to abstract painter, Miller's impulse has been the same: to wrestle with the fundamentals of life through visual media. He says of his own work: "When art and science intersect, it changes the context, beefs up the scale, and alters responses to imagery in unexpected ways. Images of the smallest of things become images you can get lost in. Scientists may not need or necessarily want that kind of scale or distraction. They're making science; they're looking for specific solutions. I'm making art and trying to communicate with a different audience, and scale is just one of the ways I try to do that."

Miller is an artist whose knowledge of visual culture and technology allows him to create works that are both densely intellectual and aesthetically beautiful. Trained by silkscreen printers who worked with Andy Warhol, and inspired by artists like Robert Rauschenberg who boldly mixed imagery in his work, Miller's photographs and paintings are uniquely wrought examinations of the systems that constitute our world.

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