MARINE ART LIVES
MEL VIN MILLER, born in Baltimore in 1937, seems to see the world of ships and water for the first time in each of his paintings: they are suffused with a sense of wonder and of opportunity. "An artist working in a representational mode," he says, "seeks to create within the two-dimensional confines of the canvas surface an illusion not only of the physical subject, but also those ethe-
Sticker, Constitution and Guerriere, records a moment of horror and disbelief for the British as the upstart Yankee frigate they had been hunting pounds their ship to pieces.
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Miller, Rough Water. A tug pursues her mission-into the heart of the storm.
real qualities of nature which excite the senses." This philosophy is backed up by an intensely studied technique ineluding research into the methods and materials of 15-18th century Italian and Flemish masters. He graduated from the Maryland Institute of Art in 1959,
where he studied under Jacques Maroger and Anne Schuler, and is represented today by Grand Central Galleries in New York. He reports with some wonder that his paintings sell "right off the easel" these days-a fact others might not find so surprising.
ROBERT STICKER spent long hours searching the sea during World War II, as pilot of a huge Navy flying boat. Returning to his job at Caltex in New York, he went to Art Students League courses at night. When he lost his job in a corporate reshuffle, severance pay provided full-time attendance at the League, where he studied under FranÂĽ Reilly. Much art teaching is taken up
with technique. "But the real secret," says Bob Sticker, "is observing things and understanding what you're observing." With Reilly's encouragement, he drew on his own knowledge of the sea, fleshed out with rigorous research into the ways of whalers and fishermen.
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