FREE SHIPPING to UK for all unframed prints
From Rothko to Ruscha: Unpacking Harland Miller’s Influences
Editorial / Artists

From Rothko to Ruscha: Unpacking Harland Miller’s Influences

10 Jul 2025 | 3 min read

Harland Miller’s art presses language into service as visual form, melding humour, nostalgia and wit in paintings that recall vintage Penguin book covers. Saturated with irony and emotional weight, his work is instantly recognisable.

In this editorial, we take a closer look at the influences that have kept Miller firmly rooted in the contemporary art fold, shaping a body of work that feels as relevant today as ever.

Most recently, in June 2025, Miller joined Talk Art hosts Russell Tovey and Robert Diament for a live podcast recording at the Nevill Holt Festival, appearing before a sold-out audience. The conversation offered a candid and often hilarious window into his practice, touching on everything from early inspirations to the evolving role of language in his work.

Mark Rothko: Colour as Emotion

Mark Rothko: Colour as Emotion

Mark Rothko’s influence is particularly visible in Miller’s use of colour fields to create atmosphere. Rothko employed colour not merely as a formal expression but as a vehicle for emotional depth. In Miller’s work, large bands of colour often frame the central text, functioning as a visual structure that mirrors the psychological tone of each invented title. Like Rothko, Miller allows colour to shape the viewer’s emotional response before text or content is fully processed.

Willem de Kooning: Gesture and Imperfection

Willem de Kooning: Gesture and Imperfection

In his earlier work, Miller’s expressive brushwork and raw surface textures recall the gestural energy of Willem de Kooning. Even in later works where graphic structure becomes more prominent, the imperfections in the paint. These drips, scuffs, and abrasions maintain a physicality that suggests Miller’s ongoing dialogue with the painterly traditions of Abstract Expressionism.

Anselm Kiefer: Memory, Surface, and Material

Anselm Kiefer: Memory, Surface, and Material

Though working with different subject matter, Harland Miller and Anselm Kiefer both explore themes of time, memory, and cultural history. Kiefer’s dense impasto and unconventional materials build up layers that feel like sedimented meaning. Miller’s surfaces, though more restrained, echo a similar sense of decay, evoking the worn textures of secondhand books. In their own ways, both artists use the canvas to tell stories shaped by emotion, memory, and the passage of time.

Ed Ruscha: Language as Image

Ed Ruscha: Language as Image

One of the most direct visual parallels in Miller’s work is with Ed Ruscha, a key figure in conceptual and Pop art. Ruscha’s use of text as image and his detached, often ironic tone are echoed in Miller’s typographic compositions. However, where Ruscha’s text often remains enigmatic, Miller’s invented book titles suggest personal narratives, emotional states, or cultural critique. They explore the shifting meaning of language when placed in a visual context.

Robert Rauschenberg: The Collage Approach

Robert Rauschenberg: The Collage Approach

Miller’s layering of cultural reference, painterly touch, and conceptual framing bears resemblance to the collage-based thinking of Robert Rauschenberg. Though Miller’s media are more traditional, he similarly fuses disparate elements, graphic design, literature, and abstraction into cohesive works that operate on multiple levels at once.

Writers: Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, and Beyond

Writers: Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, and Beyond

Miller frequently references writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway, not simply as homage, but as thematic anchors. Poe’s darkness and introspection and Hemingway’s pared-down style offer contrasting emotional registers that appear throughout Miller’s body of work. These literary figures, along with Miller’s background as a writer, reinforce the sense that his paintings are not just visual statements but narrative devices. Each title a window into an unwritten story.

Through this synthesis of artistic and literary influences, Miller creates work that is layered, referential, and emotionally complex, offering viewers a space where image and text meet to explore memory, identity, and the act of storytelling.

Listen to TalkArt Podcast interview with Harland Miller

Hang-Up updates
Get exclusive updates and special offers.