Lorelle Miller: I’m a Painting Passionista

Lorelle Miller is an award-winning artist who expresses a lifetime of developed techniques and personal investigation in her works that comprise oils, pastel, marble sculpture and other mediums. Evidenced in her artwork is a unique sensitivity for mood and emotion, which offer a glance into the deeper wells of her experience.

Lorelle shares her vision of natural beauty and the intensity of the human experience through her paintings, sculpture and street art. She utilizes a broad yet finally tuned spectrum of media, each of which contributes to her expression and visual art.  

Here is an excerpt from our interview with Lorelle.

Passionistas: What are you most passionate about?

Lorelle Miller: My strongest passion, and it may just be one thing, but it's basically, I love nature and my art. So those are probably the two things that I love and I'm most passionate about and feel happiest being involved with.

Passionistas: But it seems like you've managed to tie those two things together.

Lorelle: Yeah. I've always been somebody who loves to work outside. So a lot of my things that I do artistically, I'm happiest when I'm outdoors in nature or outside, I suppose.

Passionistas: Did you grow up in nature? What was your childhood like?

Lorelle: My main growing up years were just in the San Fernando valley, but I think I always took sort of, you know, I had sort of a, a calling towards being out in nature. I used to backpack. Yeah. So camping and, and all of that sort of thing. And I'm an artist, you know, I've always loved to draw and paint. So I don't know. Nature's always been a kind of a soothing place for me, even as a little girl, you know, I'd find a hiding place up in a tree or something.

Passionistas: Were you always an artist?

Lorelle: It seems like I started, yeah, super young because of that back in the day of, you know, growing up, if there weren't all the electronics and stuff, when I was young. So, I guess I'm sort of mechanical. And also I like to draw. It started probably when I was like eight or nine years old.

Passionistas: Did you study art formally?

Lorelle: I went to Cal State Northridge and I have a bachelor's degree from there. And then, um, I started a master's degree there also, but that didn't finish because I ended up having children. Like that kinda got carried away and I've studied with many master artists after that, just on continuing education going on in various areas.

And I've learned a lot just on the street, literally.

Passionistas: What do you mean by that?

Lorelle: Well, I'm a street painting artist, which is a nice segue, I suppose, I guess as a little kid, you know, one of the first mediums that I worked with was pastel. I mean, cause they're so forgiving actually. And I had a lot of private art lessons, luckily, cause my mom saw a lot of potential in what I did and I got a lot of accolades growing up in school. Like even in with meeting my friend, Gayle who nominated me for this, I used to be pulled out of my normal class to go into a special artist class — like for gifted kids. I did a lot of pastels at that time. And so, years later, you know, when the street painting idea came up, you know, there was something that came about in my community for that. It sort of seemed like a natural thing to try, kind of took off from there.

To learn more about her artwork, visit Lorelle Miller.com.

Listen to Lorelle’s full interview here.