“Inflorescence”
Artist Soey Milk crafts beautiful portraits of women that contain elements of calm alongside calamity. She does this by implementing visual push and pull in all of her works. Some parts of the composition, such as the faces of her subjects, are tightly rendered in a realistic style while the backdrops are gestural with visible brushstrokes and paint drippings. The results are compelling images that invite you to consider the motifs embedded in the artist’s work.
Milk finds that inspiration for her paintings can come from anywhere, and so she tries to be cognizant of when an idea arrives. “My process,” she explains, “usually starts from a really tiny scribble. Most times, I’m thinking about something and it comes to life on a piece of napkin.” She doesn’t sit down at a desk and plan out her work, and it’s this openness—that her art is inspired by her everyday existence—that makes the pieces so personal. “My paintings are of people in my life,” Milk tells My Modern Met. “Each piece highlights a certain period of my memory, making the pieces a point in my timeline of life.”
While paintings represent Milk’s most well-known pieces, sketching is important to her, too. “I've been drawing lately. To me, drawing is like a blueprint for a future painting. It is a careful search for the path, the nature of it a meditative one.”
Artist Soey Milk crafts contemporary paintings of women that have elements of calm alongside calamity.
“For the Times I Could Not Use My Breath”
“The Life Between Words”
“Panicle Mist: Blue and Mauve”
“Green and Gold”
“Silver Dagger Headdress”
“Noname My Heart”
“Thoughts to Make Love to and Sleep With”
“Juniper”
Sketching is an important part of Milk's process. “I've been drawing lately,” she tells My Modern Met. “To me, drawing is like a blueprint for a future painting.”
