Artist Statement
In my paintings, I make use of vibrant color palette, dissolved boundaries, and obscured figures to meditate on ephemerality and loss in an optimistic light. I paint from photos I have taken from my own life to spend time with moments that have passed and infuse them with feeling. While my figures are painted with thick, substantial strokes that mark an attempt to hold life still, their faces are not always clearly depicted. While some portraits are rendered meticulously, other aspects of their worlds are hazy and painterly.
Balancing an awareness of loss with a desire to solve what only dissolves, I use my own experiences to reconcile contradicting forces of change and stability, light and dark, and past and present using bright colors and musical brushstrokes. Through the resolution of these contradictions, my work attempts to capture the melancholy joy of existing in a world that changes from one moment to the next
Biography
Phoebe-Agnès Mills is a figurative oil painter from Tennessee using moments and imagery from her personal life to create a sense of balance between life’s impermanence, and the human process of documentation. Bright colors and expressive brushwork characterize her pieces, as well as a range from gently rendered to expressively abstract scenes and portraits.
This range of rendering infuses images with a sense of the preciousness of the moment, as well as the melancholy of watching it slip by. With an education from Townsend Atelier in Chattanooga, New York Academy of Art, and Florence Academy of Art, her classical training is used together with specific, personal imagery to meditate on memory, light and shadow, and her personal experience of the world. In 2022, she graduated from the University of the South, specializing in Art, Philosophy, and French. Along with teaching drawing and painting classes, she loves to dance, bake bread, and sew dresses.
Education
2022 University of the South: Sewanee, Philosophy, Art
Solo Exhibition
2022 In the Light of Loss Carlos Gallery
2021 Star and Flower Stirlings Gallery
2018 Selected Works Stirlings Gallery
Group Exhibitions
2022 Final Show, Mudhouse Residency Gallery
2022 Anamnesis, University Art Gallery
2021 Residency Show, New York Academy of Art
2018 Juried Members Show, AVA Gallery
2018 Elevate, Townsend Atelier
2018 Congressional Art Competition, US Capitol Building
Awards
2022 Hugh Harris Caldwell Jr. Award for Excellence in Philosophy, University of the South
2022 John McCrady Memorial Award for Excellence in Art, University of the South
2022 Phi Beta Kappa Member, University of the South
2021 Omicron Delta Kappa Member, University of the South
2021 Full Merit scholarship recipient to NYAA Undergraduate Program
2019 Best in Show Runner up AVA Gallery, Juried Members Show
2018 Fletcher-Bright Award for the Arts, Girls Preparatory School
2016 Full Merit Scholarship to study under Mia Bergeron
Residences
2022 Mudhouse Residency, Crete Greece
2022 Florence Academy of Art, Florence Italy
2021 Summer Undergraduate Residency Program, New York Academy of Art