He was on his lunch break from a job around the corner having just left school. Never – in his wildest dreams – did he think his artwork would one day be exhibited at the gallery.
“We weren’t really encouraged to think about becoming artists in the seventies,” says the now 61-year-old. “Art was something other people would do.”
Miller’s work – huge, bright pop art canvases as part of his XXX project which “doesn’t flout any indecency laws” – are on show in the gallery from Friday (March 14) until August.
“I said I wanted to be an artist to my careers master,” he recalls. “And he said, ‘Have you thought about window dressing?’ That was the only thing he could think of.
“It seemed foolish to fantasise about becoming an artist.
“Rather than this being a dream come true, I would never have dreamt of coming back to York with what are very contemporary paintings.”
is his second exhibition at York Art Gallery, following York, So Good They Named It Once – reimagining Penguin book covers – which ran for just weeks before Covid brought it to an abrupt close.
XXX showcases work from his letter writing series – inspired by growing up in York during the seventies and his “itinerant lifestyle” in New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Paris during the eighties and nineties.
- Read next: The man who fell to York
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