Andy Millner - Overview | Heather Gaudio Fine Art

Since 2004, Andy Millner has utilized a digital tablet and stylus to input plants and trees into his computer by hand-drawing their contours as simple outlines. These digital drawings reside as artifacts on his hard drive, akin to a dormant perennial garden awaiting realization in physical form. Over the years, Millner has outputted these drawings in various ways, such as photographs, projections, or inkjet prints imitating graphite or ink. His artistic process is iterative, evolving much like the natural world, increasing in complexity over time.

"Floating World" is crafted by digitally collaging this archive of individual plant drawings into larger, synthetic landscapes. The color scheme derives from the gradiants, traditional vegetable dyes and mineral pigments utilized in woodblock prints. However, in this instance, these works are printed by an inkjet machine (the contemporary counterpart to woodblock printing) onto mulberry paper, then mounted on linen.

This body of work evokes a "floating world" that may never have existed or may never come into being. The figures are delineated by the absence of the landscape. Rather than focusing on the figure itself, the subject becomes the memory of a landscape, highlighting the impermanence of our presence, our fraught relationship with the natural world, and our struggle to find a place in a conjured, artificial, and ever more human made environment.