Bio

Claire Milner is a British artist based in North Yorkshire. After graduating with a B.A in Graphic Design and Typography, she worked as an illustrator and was commissioned by major publishing companies. Her most recent work focuses on painting, combining an interest in science and the natural environment to discuss issues around climate change and mass extinction, concerns which have been at the centre of her work for many years. Claire is an artist member of the Gallery Climate Coalition, which develops research to help make a positive change in relation to the carbon footprint of the art industry.
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Milner’s artworks are held in a number of collections worldwide, including Blue Marilyn commissioned by award winning singer Rihanna. The portrait has appeared on The Official Website of The Estate of Marilyn Monroe, and has been showcased by Swarovski. It was included in a special edition of Vogue Paris, guest edited by Rihanna who featured the work in a profile of her favourite things. Claire Milner's work has been exhibited widely in the U.K. and abroad. The artist’s work was selected by the organising committee to be exhibited in the Blue Zone for the COP26 conference to illustrate species extinction & habitat loss with Explorers Against Extinction, as one of only fifteen exhibits out of thousands of applicants to be presented to the delegates.
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Milner’s paintings have been widely featured in the global media including the BBC, BLOUIN ARTINFO, Channel News Asia, Complex Magazine, Create! Magazine, Creative Boom, Elle, Elle Espana, FAD, Forbes, France TV, GQ Italia, Haute Living, Hello! Magazine, Huffington Post Arts, MTV Style, Musings Magazine, Newsweek Poland, OK! Magazine, Sky Arte Italia, Sky Living, Swarovski Elements Magazine, The Metro, The Observer, The Sun, The Telegraph, The Times, Vogue Paris, Vogue India and WideWalls.

https://www.claire-milner.co.uk

@clairemilnerart

Statement

Claire Milner works in collections which collate art, science, and nature. Environmental references such as climate change and mass extinction have always been the central focus of her image making, highlighting the human connection to the natural world and its impact upon critical ecosystems and species. She uses imagery from environmental research, combined with art historical tropes and themes from classical literature and mythology. These references are interwoven in topical and historical narratives. Milner’s latest paintings, at the intersection of abstraction and figuration, explore ideas surrounding the revealed, the hidden and the disappeared. In a world full of immediate image consumption, this work eludes immediate digestion, instead, inviting the act of slow-looking. Signifying both chaos and order, densely layered compositions condense ideas and memories, making reference to a way of thinking, rather than depicting precise representational images. On moving closer, figuration withdraws, leaving abstract shapes in a simultaneous left and right brain activation. The portrayal of animals’ interchanges between metaphoric and literal and continues a wide-ranging history of animal images in art. The impact of humanity is always implicit, even when the human figure is absent or plays a minor role in the composition. The paintings accentuate the uneasy juxtaposition of abundance and loss and contrast commercial values with environmental ideals as determinants of worth. The content is universal: life and death. In a conversation with art history, current topical issues and the viewer, Milner’s paintings give equal value to creating work that is both aesthetically and environmentally significant.