York artist Harland Miller returns 'home' to city with new exhibition

The York-born artist is staging his largest solo show to date in his home city and with the paint having barely dried on his most recent canvases he’s considering issuing a health warning.

“I have no idea who is responsible for writing health and safety advice, but I swear on some tubes of acrylics it says not to ingest wet paint. I mean, who would? But given that some of the works going on display could still be tacky to the touch, I’m thinking I might need to put up some ‘please don’t lick’ signs.”

Miller, who first began to flex his artistic muscles as a teenager in the 1970s, is now best known for his Penguin Book Covers series. It’s an homage to the publisher’s iconic dust jackets from the 1950s and 60s only with the original titles replaced with deadpan mottos like No Giving In To Will Power and Recently Deceased Seeks Similar.

Reemergence of the English master locked away in Yorkshire’s municipal art galleriesEqually striking – and likely to be the biggest draw at Miller’s York Art Gallery exhibition – are his Pelican Bad Weather Paintings which poke gentle fun at the holiday resorts of his childhood. From Bridlington – 93,000,000 Miles From the Sun to Whitby the Self Catering Years and York – So Good They Named it Once, while Miller may no longer live in Yorkshire, his work remains very much rooted here.

“I made the first of the Pelican series 17 years ago when my wife was pregnant with our son Blake. I remember thinking, ‘I am about to become a father, but my son is going to grow up somewhere completely different from where I did’. I suppose it made me feel nostalgic for my own childhood.

“For me those holidays are a reminder of simpler times. My mum’s family were from Staithes and we often used to go up there on weekends. Dad’s Austin Healey was forever breaking down and mum would be panicking about negotiating Devil’s Elbow, a notoriously tricky bend on the coast road, even before we passed the Rowntree’s chocolate factory near the end of our street.

“The whole journey took on mythic proportions, wondering whether we’d make it or not. It wasn’t helped when my brother Baz insisted on driving and Dad made him hand-drawn L-plates with a felt tip pen which was running out.”

Miller’s family is a major influence on his work and if it hadn’t been for his dad, those Pelican Bad Weather Paintings may never have materialised at all.

“He used to collect books, any kind of books,” says Miller. “He didn’t have a lot of money, but he was a regular at the auction houses in Leeds. For a fiver you could get a cardboard box, the kind that a washing machine might have come in, and it would be full of random books. Dad always thought he might find a first edition of an Ernest Hemingway among the Haynes car manuals and copies of the Dalesman, but he never did.

We look at some of the visual arts highlights coming up in Yorkshire in 2020“Instead he used to pay me to sort the books into piles and I always loved the colours of the Pelicans, which was the factual imprint of Penguin. There was just something really appealing about them and while it wasn’t until years later that I decided to paint one, right from the start I realised it was going to be a series. I’m not sure I could have stopped if I’d wanted to. It became a compulsion.”

Miller is often described as the natural heir to the Pop Art movement, which saw the likes of Andy Warhol turn soup tins into prized paintings and who immortalised Marilyn Monroe in technicolor. Like Warhol, Miller sees the use of familiar brands in his work as a way of connecting with a wider audience.

“I’ve always liked popular culture because I think it can talk to people in a way what might be described as more difficult art can’t,” he adds. “I get really candid letters from people telling me what my paintings mean to them. I’ve had people who are dying tell me they want to use one of the titles for their gravestone. I never know quite what to say to that kind of request, but of course I’m flattered that my work has struck such a chord.”

While there is a tongue in cheek quality to much of his work, Miller has also ploughed the darker side of his past for inspiration and a separate series of paintings, which first went on display at Gateshead’s Baltic 10 years ago, were based on the billboards West Yorkshire Police unsuccessfully used to try to catch the Yorkshire Ripper.

“They went up at the point they were convinced the man they were looking for was from the North East. They’d received letters from someone purporting to be from the killer along with a tape of a man with a Geordie accent.

“Before they realised it was a hoax, they put excerpts from the letter, along with a number to call to hear his voice, on posters. I rediscovered them when I was researching a book I was writing.

“As the months wore on, the posters became rain soaked and torn. They ended up sandwiched between the advertisements underneath for hedge trimmers and holidays and those that had been placed on top for local music gigs. Together they seemed to be a collage for life at the time.”

The Yorkshire couple who share their home with dozens of moving mechanical works of artMiller’s most recent work also draws on his past, but it is linked to happier memories of first discovering medieval manuscripts while studying graphic design in York.

“When you open those big old books, which were handwritten by monks, the first letter of the first word of the first line is always highly decorated.

“I fell in love with them and I have carried them around in a portfolio ever since. I knew it would come in useful one day and I was right. In both the Penguin and Pelican collections the size of the font and each word was really important, but with this latest work I am trying to use as few words as possible so you have to work at it a bit to make out what it’s saying.”

The York Art Gallery exhibition will feature 30 paintings and while Miller’s return to York may have been a long time coming he’s glad to be back.

“I don’t want to sound like a hippy, but I think there is always a right time and a wrong time for doing something. I’m a great believer that you get a sense when something feels right – or at least I do. This feels exactly right. The right time and the right place.

“I think it’s true for most artists that whatever success they’ve achieved, there is something significant about having their work recognised in their home city. There is a historical and emotional connection which can’t be manufactured – Yorkshire is special to me and I hope that shows in this exhibition.”

Harland Miller: York, So Good They Named it Once, runs to May 31. yorkartgallery.org.uk