Endangered Rivers - Recent Paintings by Ben Miller

It was early evening late June, 2019. I was at a fundraiser for the Gallatin River Task Force, a gala barbecue thrown along the banks of the Gallatin River in Big Sky, Montana. 
The Gallatin River is a tributary of the Missouri River approximately 120 miles long that flows through Wyoming and Montana. It converges, along with the Jefferson and the Madison, near Three Forks, Montana, to form the Misssouri. The river winds through high Alpine meadows and drops into the rocky Gallatin Valley. 
Ever since portions of the river were used in the 1992 film, "A River Runs Through It", the river has achieved almost mythical status for fly fishermen. Rainbow trout, brown trout and mountain whitefish are abundant, or have been abundant in the past. Climate change and over use of the river is a concern, and the fundraiser was part of a larger effort to address theses concerns.
It had been a wet spring and early summer. The river was full, and Montana was unusually green. Both sides of the river were luminous. The grass on the opposite bank moved into a softer green meadow, spotted by darker pines moving up the more mountainous ridge.
Along the river, I saw a fly fisherman casting his rod. Although I was still new to Montana, I was able to recognize the difference between amateur fly fishermen and those more expert. The good ones moved like the waves in the sea - each wave both different and the same, as if gravity had embodied itself into a union of man, rod and line.
But something was off. The rod kept going back and forth, back and forth, perhaps a dozen times - there was no one back, two back and then cast of the fly into the river waters. And the fisherman was too far from the banks of the river 
I drew closer, and saw, perhaps 20 feet in front of the fisherman, a handmade aluminum A frame easel supporting a 3 x 4 foot piece of mounted plexiglass. Each cast of the rod was accompanied by a "thud" of contact with the end of the line and the plexiglass, leaving paint marks that, together, strangely seemed similar to the reflecting surface of the river beside him. 
I realized I was watching an artist paint the river, but not in the traditional manner of paint, paintbrush and canvas, but instead, by a controlled casting of a fly rod. Even more amazing was how the artist controlled the area in which the "fly" would land - it was unimaginable that the application of paint could be controlled, that the artist could control which quadrant he wished to "hit".
When I looked closer, each "thwack" on the plexiglass left a specific mark. Later I would learn that the artist created dozens of what he called "fly brushes", made sometimes of yarn, sometime thread, pipe cleaners, leather, feathers and more, some long, and some in loops. 
Over the course of about five hours, Miller would cast over one thousand times, with rapt attention to the river he was painting. For larger fly-brushes, Miller would use a different rod, a two-handed spey rod, which is capable of delivering marks at over 80 miles per hour. When he finished, there was one further revelation - Miller, in a sense, paints backwards - the actual finished painting is the reverse of the paint covered transparent polycarbonate. Turned around, the first strikes of the day are "on top" of the painting and the last form the backdrop.
That was my introduction to Ben Miller, and what he called "Fly Cast Painting". I was a New York art dealer who had recently moved to Bozeman, Montana, with a twenty year history of showing modern American art rooted in the 1930s through the 1960s, and discovering artists who were not recognized in their time.
What Ben did not know was that I was looking at his art through the lens of 20th Century art history, with a particular interest in the ground-breaking art of Jackson Pollock and Morris Louis.

Miller is in this tradition - he shares with both the struggle between intentionality and chance, and the choice to eschew the traditional artist's brush, but differs primarily because he is a realist - his subject matter is rivers, and the natural world that he has been fishing and hunting in since he was eight years old, growing up in rural Washington State. 
His painting process - starting early in the morning on the banks of his chosen river, setting up easel and polycarbonate support, choosing acrylic paint colors that align with the river, choosing "fly brushes" that capture the shape and energy of moving water, then, in a way that has a shade of Gutai, physically engaging in the act of painting for upwards to eight hours, cast after cast - shares the patience of a fly fisherman or a weathered cowboy on the prairie from dawn to dusk.
Ben's star seems to be on the rise - he was one of 16 artists invited to be in the PROFILE section of the recent Expo Chicago, and his booth of "Endangered Rivers" was well received. He partnered with the Friends of the Chicago River to paint the Chicago River. His star is on the rise!!

Gary Snyder

 

 

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