Artist Statement
At its core, my practice explores tenderness, care, and collective strength, an intervention within contemporary culture.
Faces and bodies act as vessels for emotion: expressions of a state, held between stillness and becoming, care and rebellion.
Working in oil, I move through a process of reduction. Figures are no longer fully described, but emerge through thin veils of colour and light. Form softens, edges dissolve, and the image hovers in a state of partial visibility—held between presence and disappearance. Painting becomes a space of holding, where what remains is not fixed identity, but psychological and emotional resonance.
Fragments, such as a gaze, a mouth, the trace of hair, anchor the work within fields of diffused colour. These elements carry quiet intensity, while the surrounding surface opens onto an atmosphere of possibility .
Influenced by feminist thought and writers, and informed by communities grounded in care and quiet resistance, the work investigates how tenderness, stillness, and attention can challenge hierarchies that dismiss the emotional or the decorative as superficial.
These paintings do not seek resolution, but containment - offering a space where vulnerability, resilience, and quiet strength can coexist.
Bio
Zelga Simone Miller is currently completing an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art and has exhibited internationally, including two solo shows. Alongside her painting practice, Miller is also a printmaker and has served as a judge at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair. She began drawing in 2017 following a previous career, and undertook training at the Ruskin School of Art, Central Saint Martins, Wimbledon College of Arts, and Turps Art School that has shaped her practice grounded in material sensitivity, figuration, and lived experience.
Mentoring forms an important part of Zelga’s engagement with the artistic community. She has worked with artists through the Koestler Trust, OVADA, a-space-between and Women Forward International. This experience sits alongside a studio practice as a way of supporting creative development, confidence, and professional voices in others.