Lewis Miller (b. 1959, Melbourne) is a celebrated figurative and still life painter. Painting from life; the close observation of Miller’s subjects is revealed through bold linework, vivid colour and expressive brushstrokes. Miller trained at the Victorian College of the Arts, where he also completed his post graduate studies.
One of Australia’s leading portrait painters, Miller was awarded the Hugh Ramsay Portrait Prize in 1981, and having been shortlisted for the Archibald Prize nineteen times, won in 1998 with his portrait of fellow artist Allan Mitelman. He was awarded the 2000 Sporting Portrait Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with his painting of football icon, Ron Barassi. He has been a finalist eight times in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize. Other awards include the James Farrell Self Portrait Award at the Castlemaine City Art Gallery in 2007, Belle Arti Chapman & Bailey Art Award in 2010 and the Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize in 2017.
In 2003, Deakin University’s Stonnington Stables Museum of Art curated the exhibition, Lewis Miller: selected portraits 1983-2003. Commissioned portraits include Nobel Laureate Dr James Dewey Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, Everest explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, Sidney Baillieu Myer AC, the Hon Justice Kim Santow OAM and Robert French Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. Miller has travelled and exhibited widely and as regular artist in residence at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, in 2003 and 2005 Miller was commissioned to produce a suite of portraits of the scientists and technicians involved in the mapping of the human genome. In 2019, ‘Faces of the Genome’ was published in New York.
In 2003, Lewis Miller was appointed Official Australian Artist to the conflict in Iraq by the Australian War Memorial. The artist spent three weeks in the Middle East where he recorded the services of the RAN, the RAAF, the Army and Special Forces (S.A.S.)
Miller’s work is represented in private and public collections in Australia and overseas, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Australian War Memorial, Canberra; High Court of Australia, Canberra; National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; Monash University, Melbourne; Deakin University Art Collection, Melbourne; University of New South Wales, Sydney; Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland; Karolyi Foundation, Vence; Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris; and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York.
Image: Lewis Miller, Study for ‘Big ivy’, 2025, oil on Belgian linen, 66 x 51cm
