Artist’s road to inspiration
But not too many people would pick him for a truck driver, at home behind the wheel of a massive B-double on the long haul to Sydney.
He is a rare combination: a truckie who paints. Or an artist who drives trucks, not just for the money but also for the way it lets his mind wander while his eyes graze the landscape.
Normally Miles would be away on a Wednesday, up on his usual run to Sydney, but on the day he talks to the Gazette he’s in Warragul preparing for his new exhibition.
In December last year, along with two local artist friends, Phil Henshall and Graeme Myrteza, he camped at Arkaroola, in South Australia, for several weeks, painting by day, cooking on a campfire under the stars, conversing over a few bottles of wine.
It’s been his preferred way of working for many years.
He returned with 20 works on paper and completed 13 oils on canvas back in his studio at Drouin West.
The Arkaroola exhibition, at the Hawthorn Studio and Gallery, will be his 33rd one-man show.
“Over the years I’ve really done Australia my way,” he says. “I don’t say I’m better than anyone else. It’s just that I’ve been painting a long time.
“I’ve done about 1600 paintings. I’ve probably sold 900 works in the past 30 or 40 years – all over the world.”
His vivid abstract landscapes have seen Miles tagged as belonging to the school of Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Fred Williams. “It’s an influence you can’t get out of,” he says. As a young student doing a diploma of fine arts at RMIT in the late 1960s, he drank red wine with Fred Williams, a friend of several of his lecturers.
“It was an eye opener for a kid from Drouin!” Miles says.
He’d wanted to be an artist from the age of 10, when he first discovered the joy of painting as a pupil at Drouin State School.
For his final two years of schooling, he went to Warragul Technical School which had just started an art school, and finished up with two years at RMIT.
He left art school in 1970, came back to Drouin with his first wife in 1975 and built a studio using the timber on his property. When he finished the studio, he wondered what to paint, so he painted the views outside.
It was the first of the series that were to become his trademark.
“A lot of artists try to get the best picture – I’m going the other way. I don’t often do one or two pictures, I do a series.”
Later he shifted the old Buln Buln hall onto the property and opened a gallery, which soon became a gathering place for weddings, funerals, significant birthdays, concerts.
His career breakthrough came when he was selected as the first exhibiting artist at the opening of the West Gippsland Arts Centre in 1982.
The exhibition, featuring his Jindivick series, was opened by former deputy prime minister Jim Cairns, whom he’d painted for the Archibald Prize. (“I took him a couple of loads of firewood, that was his payment. He didn’t stop working while I painted him.”)
More than 3000 people went to see the Jindivick paintings and he sold a lot of work.
Selling his paintings gives him a great deal of satisfaction, and not just for monetary reasons.
“I believe the work goes to someone who wants it and that’s a good feeling. Some are investors, which is a great buzz.”
He’s had some local patrons over the years. One local, a friend, has 30 or 40 of his works. He’s been buying them for years.
For Miles, there’s satisfaction in knowing that as his reputation has grown, so has the value of his friend’s collection, now worth more than $200,000.
These days he doesn’t need to drive trucks but he likes the rhythm of it, a couple of days on the road, five days at home working on his art.
“I relax when I drive,” he says, “but you’ve got to be very purposeful with a big fast B-double truck – you’ve got to look a long way ahead.
“I’m looking at things, and that runs into thinking of your art business.”
When he’s home, he doesn’t wait for the mood to strike him but goes out to the studio and starts. The act of painting invariably sets something in motion.
He can be working on 20 oils at a time. They’re stacked around the studio.
“Every time you work in that studio, something is triggered just by observing your works.
“If you take notice that enables you to understand your work as it progresses.”
And finally, sometimes after months, it’s finished.
“When I can’t think of anything to put on that painting,” Miles replies, “that’s it. I sign it and start another.”
Arkaroola Two Series is at the Hawthorn Studio and Gallery from October 8-29. His friends Phil Henshall and Graeme Myrteza will exhibit their own Arkaroola paintings just around the corner at the Quadrant Gallery from October 20 to November 12.