Moth

Mia Middleton

Moth, 202125 x 30cmPrice on Request
Details
Material
oil on Italian cotton
Description
Human-crafted. AI-refined.

This contemporary artwork features a close-up image of a butterfly against a dark, textured background. The composition is striking, with the butterfly's intricate patterns and delicate wings contrasted by the dramatic, almost sculptural folds of the dark fabric or surface behind it. The technique employed suggests a highly detailed and photorealistic style, capturing the nuances of the butterfly's form and the rich, velvety tones of the background. The artist's intention may be to draw attention to the beauty and fragility of nature, juxtaposing it with a mysterious, almost theatrical backdrop that adds a sense of drama and contemplation to the piece. ...

Similar Artworks
Being Wild No.3 奔放 No.3
Tao Hui 陶辉Being Wild No.3 奔放 No.3, 2022Price on Request
Untitled
Joan JonasUntitled, 2008Price on Request
Ostia Antica
Sara VanDerBeekOstia Antica, 2012Price on Request
Famous Artists from Chicago
Roger BrownFamous Artists from Chicago, 1970Price on Request
Untitled
Joan JonasUntitled, 20088000 USD
Mother
Sara VanDerBeekMother, 202312000 USD
Mask for a Waitress
Roger BrownMask for a Waitress, 1974Price on Request
Belongs to...
Douglas GordonBelongs to..., 202019500 EUR
Giant Pumpkin No.3
Anthea HamiltonGiant Pumpkin No.3, 2022Price on Request
Mother + Father
Candice BreitzMother + Father, 2005Price on Request
Untitled
Bunny RogersUntitled, 2020Price on Request
11:34 AM
Olivia Erlanger11:34 AM, 20208000 USD
Being Wild No.1 奔放 No.1
Tao Hui 陶辉Being Wild No.1 奔放 No.1, 2022Price on Request
Mia Middleton
Artist
Mia Middleton

As a film director draws up storyboards, Mia maps out her paintings on dotted sketchbooks. She scatters the pages with poetic phrases (‘Tasting blood’), rhetorical questions (‘What do I need to see?), small illustrative sketches – setting the scenes before she moves onto canvas, her brushes like a clapperboard clicking everything into action. Mia spares introductions, too – each painting plummeting the viewer into territories that are seemingly familiar but yet wholly unfamiliar, a party with uninvited guests mingling sheepishly. When planning a painting, there’s no end to where Mia will mine for inspiration: scouring books to find peculiar artefacts or artworks, watching countless surrealist horror, drama and fantasy films, or rummaging through her wide collection of rocks and tchotchkes. She goes to such length in search of moods to influence her paintings by ‘capturing a feeling’ as she calls it. In Fire, the protagonists’ red eyes are a similar hue to a silver frog mustard pot Mia found online; or, in Lounge, the gently rising smoke of a residual cigarette riffs off the one Sylvia von Harden bears in Otto Dix’s portrait. As she combs through her ever growing catalogue, the concepts for her paintings often emerge fleetingly, each one representing a collaging from an array of sources, sometimes even depicting the artist herself – in Swallow, her hand clasps the apple, morphed to a figure she found from a black and white magazine. Although the context of the paintings seem disparate – a leather glove, a moth clasped to a jacket, an orange tree – they view as scenes from the same unfolding drama. Here in Through the Gate her episodes are no bigger than a book, mostly cast behind muddied tones of opaque and blanched paint, felicitously similar to the hues in Edward Hopper’s painting of a woman sitting in a cinema. You’ll notice that Mia’s subjects are often off-balance or posing awkwardly, introducing a sense of suspense or set of contradictions, and adding to the filmic quality, snapshots from a drama. The titular Through the Gate depicts a hand tightly gloved in leather: you can only guess what it’s about to do, its strident angles reminiscent of Agostino Pallavicini’s pose in Anthony van Dyck’s portrait. In Glass with Marble, the marble rests perfectly, impossibly on the lip of a glass – the reds and flittering tinges of light similar to the tones in a Folmer Bonnen still life. She refers to the process as ‘animating’, bringing a new, heightened perspective to looking at images. This ‘perpetual charge’ allows her to constantly reinvent situations, merging centuries of influence into windows of drama. Mia doesn’t hold back: without lingering too long on composition she works directly onto canvas, using a range of small brushes. She prefers painting on a thin Italian cotton, the delicate weft of thread often visible behind the veils of paint. She mixes her paints with linseed and stand oils to make them gleam, and gives them the glow of a polished artefact dug from the deep. ...

Mia Middleton: Artworks
Swallow
Mia MiddletonSwallow, 2021Price on Request
Lounge
Mia MiddletonLounge, 2021Price on Request
Moth
Mia MiddletonMoth, 2021Price on Request
Through the Gate
Mia MiddletonThrough the Gate, 2021Price on Request
Glass with Marble
Mia MiddletonGlass with Marble, 2021Price on Request
Orchard
Mia MiddletonOrchard, 2021Price on Request
Station
Mia MiddletonStation, 2021Price on Request