artist profile: james miles

At the Creativity Explored studio in San Francisco—a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit and sell art—artist James Miles’ imagery blurs the limits of perspective.

If James were to tell you a story, it would include silent spaces for he’s soft-spoken. His visual stories—often ink drawings of miniature scenes—reveal our shared love of simple pleasures.

Their composition of ‘unusual combinations of perspectives’ blur the limits of inside/outside, near/far, small/large, male/female, and past/present to entice the viewer/listener into the paradoxically immense spaces of his diminutive artwork.

They are spaces that use the logic of dreams and fairytales and—like every great universally told story—his reveal our shared love of simple pleasures enjoyed with one another, on a gorgeous day that we hope will never end.

Perhaps the orange bird pillow—featuring James’ extra-large and orange bird—in reality signals the coming of an early spring even though the groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter.

To spend one minute with James Miles in the Creativity Explored studio, go here.