Gabriel Mills

Gabriel Mills artwork is a texture wonderland with melodic and intimate conversations of morals and values intertwined. “Several themes converge at the core of Gabriel Mills' painting practice; among them are time, transformation, love, language, weight, and spirituality.” (Gabriel Mills, 2024) 

Erika:  I have an icebreaker question I'm gonna go with first just to ease you into the interview and then we can jump right in. What is your earliest memory of your favorite artist? 

Gabriel: All right well it's interesting, I don't know if I have a favorite artist and I think it's like a dynamic relationship I have with art and with experiences. The greatest strong impact to like visual art was comic books but it wasn't exactly about the artist making it. I was actually very drawn into the story that the artist was telling through the vehicle of spiderman or batman. Yeah, those characters actually drew me in like a much bigger world and it was kind of interesting to think that there is like a snowballing effect of like it just kept growing and growing. There were different landing spots and landmarks along that journey and one of them that might give you some sort of concrete structure to this question was Salvador Dali. I came across his work in high school and I didn't know anything about art history like I just knew about comic books and sports and stuff like that. I was in my high school class and I was painting and my teacher had told me that my work looks like Dali and I must love his work. I said I don't know who the guy is. So when I found his work I just saw like we had some sort of affinity to this language that already exists which was surrealism. I'd say I point to that as like an anchor point because from there I guess I crossed over from the comic book world. Into maybe more of like a fine art world and understanding like there's a long lineage of artists that are engaging with ideas that I might already be thinking about but just didn't know there were other people doing this.

Erika:  Yeah so you, kind of like got jump-started into the culture.

Gabriel: Yeah right, yeah.

Erika: So how has your love for art and creativity changed through your journey as an artist?

Gabriel: I would say the way that I think about it is at one point, this is actually a very good question, a very big question. I would say at one point I might have misidentified the answer to that, and maybe, I have identified the answer to be, and I need to illustrate what that love looks like by means of the conclusion of the painting. I would say where it is now and where it actually always was but I just wasn’t able to identify it; is actually in the doing of creativity in the process, that’s what I was always so affixed to, and it wasn’t until maybe, I don’t know, a few years ago, I was able to really locate that. So I would say that the biggest change is my understanding of my love; but my love was always very, very much evident and very much like all-consuming, and I think the idea of making, requires love for it. Because, like when you’re breaking down, what love really is, it’s not supposed to be, an easy ride by any means, you know, and it’s a commitment.  It’s giving all of yourself to it sometimes. 

“Like people say love is like 50/50, sometimes it’s not, sometimes it’s 100/0. Sometimes whatever the entity that you’re loving might not have the capacity to love you back. I think through my fiance, like my family, through relationships with people I was able to understand a little bit more about what love is. What that looks like in my paintings is a similar idea of all consuming, all giving, working hard at it, really digging deep so that that’s more or less where my mind is at as far as the relationship of the creativity to the other.”

Erika:  I love that.  What is your biggest learning curve as an artist? How do you feel like your work has changed since your last gallery show?

Gabriel: Okay, biggest learning curve. it’s interesting, okay. Well, let me first think about a few learning curves. There’s learning curves with exhibiting with galleries and working with artists. I think that’s a really good way to think about art dealers and talking about the business side of things. I would say the biggest learning curve there was first of all understanding what, what’s fair and what is a reasonable approach in like the dynamics between the artist and the dealer. The artist and the gallery, the artist and the curator. I had an intuition of what that looks like and initially I didn’t really trust that intuition. I was like, I don’t know,  I don’t want to mess something up. So I had to learn a lot by just asking and speaking to a lot of other artists and getting other people’s experiences of how they’re doing things. Once I started to like to see how things unfold I was like Okay, I think my intuition was closer to what the reality is, which is like it’s just like anything else you know what I mean? There’s shady people in every industry; there are people who do right in every industry; there’s something in between you know what I mean? I think it’s what it was: the learning curve. The biggest learning curve with the gallery system is understanding what I want, being able to vocalize that, and bring that to whatever conversations I’m having. That also means saying no a lot of times; that also means protecting what I think is best for me. Being very selective, but I would just say the learning curve with art practice is the concept of patience. When you’re in grad school and working and you’re talking to different dealers and stuff like that, you might feel like you have a pressure to like okay, I have to make the greatest thing ever right now; do you know what I mean? I don’t want to miss this shot; I gotta put together this thing that’s gonna take over the world. Some of my colleagues I’ve seen have that mindset and what ends up happening is they end up derailing from their actual vision, they might end up very diluted and very uninspiring. I would say the learning curve is really being patient in developing your practice and developing what matters to you most, and taking your time to be like an expert in whatever it is that you’re doing. I have to be an expert in making Gabriel Mill paintings; these are yeah, these are mine. I have to make them the best thing that they could be, and have trust in that your artwork ultimately is like an entity of yourself, right ultimately. 

Erika: What I’m hearing is that you learned your worth, like self-worth, and your worth as an artist. What do you value yourself at, that’s really beautiful because we don’t know going in; we just know, ‘okay, I value my worth at this.’ What are they seeing? How am I going to put my foot down and say, ‘okay, this is what I expect’? You know, that’s what I’m hearing from you. 

Gabriel: Yeah, 100 percent. I mean, you know, one of my favorite words I learned that sounds like old or something, is gaslighting. So there’s a lot of gaslighting that happens because like, you’ll say ‘okay’ you’ll come to the table and say ‘okay, this is what I want this is what I expect, and they’ll try to make you sound like you’re crazy. 

Erika: Then you talk to somebody else, and they’re like no, that’s totally like you’re reasonable, so you have to be able to like understand that and not get offended when people try to do that and just communicate in such different ways and like and some people communicate in the right way and have like an ability to like be empathetic and understand and listen some people are not versed in that so like it’s kind of like seeing in between the lines of like what how they communicate and so on and so forth.

Gabriel: Yeah without a doubt, I want to enter the second part of that question which was how has the work changed from my last gallery show till now, let’s see, I think because it was so recent. I could touch on more so like what this era or energy or aura, whatever it is that I’m working on is. I would say, okay, so I had a show in LA over the summer and I thought it was so funny because there was this art critic who wrote this review about my work which I was appreciative of. He said, Gabriel Mills is a perfectionist, but he was saying it like it was a terrible thing, I was actually grateful that he noted that because that tells me he’s looking. I think because that’s probably true I think it is true to a degree. I have perfectionist tendencies with my paintings and it’s very; it might be very difficult for somebody to know that because of the way they look they might end up looking like very explosive or a lot of energy or just like an emotional experience, and that’s usually not paired with rationality and perfectionism is prepared with is uh is paired with being hyper rational. I think my work is kind of like a blend of those two things, I just want to say that like that’s kind of where my work has been, is like allowing a lot of space and time for fluidity and movement and dealing with intuition. But then meeting that with I guess like some level of criticality and engagement and refinement. I’d say that’s where my work has been and it’s kind of still there like that’s something that I’m exploring and I think there’s a lot of space in there for me to still get more out of. 

Erika  I think that’s really beautiful is that you know although our minds on this page might be like all these different colors and all these different places and the composition might be insane there’s still moments where I choose okay this is where this color is going to complement this color. Where you know that’s like you said that might be perfection but an idea of perfection and the idea of being precise, but to you that’s beautiful and to other people that might be chaos for their mind.  

Gabriel: They don’t think that the idea is to create something worth engaging. Also, to create something that is autonomous enough that you could come to it and bring yourself to it and accept whatever you’re feeling about it, and then you can do it and you can do it and you can do it and you can do it about it, you know. So I guess, I’m trying to create when it comes to an audience and how they’re going to engage with it.

Erika: Each person’s going to have a different experience emotionally than the next.

Gabriel: Yeah, and I also want them to be comforted by that, I think, because so one thing that’s really funny sometimes. I’ve gotten people, they’ve come to my work and they’re like ‘Yo, this is amazing but I just have no idea what I’m looking at.’ I grabbed them by the shoulders, I’m like ‘it’s okay.’ 

Erika: It’s cool if you sit there for hours and look at it too and still have nothing, you could feel happy, you’d be sad. Do you love the community that you’re part of now? Do you feel like you have a community around you?

Gabriel: Yeah, I’m not saying I do, the thing is it’s very small. We’re in my studio and my studio building there’s a lot of other artists. There’s other businesses here. It’s a very big building with an industrial kind of setup and everybody here’s very friendly. I have a colleague-type relationship or associates, I’ll see somebody we’ll talk in the hallway for a minute about that kind of thing and then I have maybe an embedded patron or five artists here that I’m kind of tight with, and I’ll call them up to come look at something. We’ll discuss art or discuss life or stuff like that. I like that, I like keeping it there. Do you know what I mean? I probably have like one really tight friend who’s an artist, who he also is in my personal life, so there’s kind of like a veil you know what I mean? 

Erika It’s good to have a balance of like boundaries, the idea of community to you might be that. I have one person that I might go to.  But do you feel supported in the community that you’ve created?

Gabriel: Without a doubt, yeah, 100, and I think it’s over the years it changes. That’s why it’s a good question, and it’s a good moment of reflection to think about where that is in your life at this moment because, like, for example, 10 years ago when we’re in undergrad, you’re part of a sorority, I’m a part of a fraternity, you got art friends, I got art friends, you got just people who aren’t a part of any of those things, yeah, it’s like a big blend.

Erika: I had no idea I had no idea what an acquaintance was versus a friend, like you know, yeah, because everyone was my friend. There was no boundary of what makes a friend, what makes an acquaintance, what makes someone that you can text on occasion just to be like ‘yo’, like pull up to the studio come look at my piece? 

Gabriel: Exactly, over the years I’ve learned that, and I’ve stuck to that. When I was at grad school, I was still, I think I was pretty good at it, but I’m still learning that. I saw it very quickly because in grad school it was similar to undergrad where there’s a lot of drama and it’s like, ‘I don’t want to be a part of any of this.’ I just want to paint,  leave me alone, you know? So anyway, as it is now I feel supported by the community.  Everybody is like an acquaintance or a colleague or a friend or whatever it’s all really good, no, no real issues,

Erika: Yeah, that’s great, awesome. What’s a memorable experience that shifted the way you approach your art? 

Gabriel: I’ll touch on a few things but I’ll still tell you the same story that came to mind initially. 

Erika: Yeah I’d love to hear it. 

Gabriel: Just so you could just understand how my mind is operating. For example, three years ago me and my fiance went to the cat scales for my birthday. We were I don’t know the name of this hike or this mountain or anything like that but when we got there we were like oh my god. We were walking there I noticed at a certain point, I had to be extremely careful to not walk too heavy or too light or too much to the right or left. Or else I could have slipped and maybe fell off the cliff or gotten injured and tumbled over or something like that. So I was just very, very aware of my body movement. I ended up getting into like this rhythm; it was like it was kind of like that of and that pace kind of just kept me moving and in a way it felt like a heartbeat or something, like that.

 Erika: It’s so funny that you say that because your work is driven by your love for music, right? Like, you’re often creating beats in your head as you’re walking; yeah, that’s pretty cool. 

Gabriel: Absolutely. That’s kind of what was happening and somehow, it’s interesting those moments they don’t always like. From the beginning I was mentioning this idea of illustrating them versus living it and experiencing it, so I wasn’t compelled to try to describe that awareness and presence and sensation that I was feeling. But I was really actually interested in trying to capture that idea of hyper presence and awareness of my body and its relationship to things outside of it. Maybe the way that might have manifested because it’s hard to always know like the causation and correlation and where that lands in the work exactly. But afterwards the work actually became a little more dense and in the scale I shifted a little bit more started going with squares a little bit more and squares to me are like the most solid, stable shape and they have a lot of weight in there that’s what I was about to say they feel very they feel very heavy.

Erika: For sure yeah squares are just totally heavy.

Gabriel: An observation I made about my work is that I don’t remember the last time I painted on a surface that has a landscape format. My work ends up in a landscape format by the addition of multiple verticals…

Erika:  From your triptychs or diptychs..

Gabriel: Yeah right but none of those panels ever exceed the square, they’ll stay vertical or square but they don’t get horizontal and something about that moment it feels like it mattered to how that work ended up coming about. But the other moment that I wanted to touch on, was about five or five years ago when I first started at grad school, everything felt extremely fast, and this is actually how the triptych formats started. Actually, everything felt extremely fast, and I found myself for a minute slipping into that kind of, high-speed, high-paced working and thinking. I was like, ‘That is not who I am at all.’

Erika: So, producing a piece at a fast pace rather than taking your time and really thinking about it? That is what you’re saying?

Gabriel: I’m, it’s not exactly that, I don’t know how to describe it. It was like energy because I was still doing what I was doing. I was still taking my time with things I was still happy with the quality of work but there was something about… 

Erika: Your energy process? 

Gabriel: Yes, like in my intention for why I’m doing that it wasn’t matching up with my foundation. You know what I mean?

 Erika: Yeah, how is your energy usually in your process? 

Gabriel: If you ever come into my studio, this song is just on. It’s called Music for Airports, okay and it’s the name of the song that I listened to. It’s one slash one. Then the other song is titled ‘An Ending’, those two songs I listen to all the time. You were asking me what is usually like the energy, I would say if you listen to that song, one slash one, that’s usually the energy, it’s very slow, it’s like a 17 minute long song, it’s ambient, the notes are very spaced out. There’s a lot of just air in there, yeah but it feels both contemplative maybe even existential to a degree, but the idea is that it, it just feels like very much so about being present, like that’s what I that’s typically the way that I work and the way that I’m thinking. The way that I approach my thoughts very slowly, and then I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’ I’m slow; very much like allowing it to breathe, and allowing it allowing me to be like, very much inside of it. 

Erika: The way that I described your work, I said Gabriel Mill’s artwork is a texture wonderland with melodic and intimate conversations of morals and values intertwined, and that’s to me what I think of when I think of your work; 

Gabriel: That’s a great, great way to put it. I appreciate that, 

Erika: Yeah, because, to me it’s very melodic; it is a texture wonderland. Like, you look at your work and you’re just like ‘wow’, that is delicious in a way, you know? 

Erika: How do you keep yourself motivated?What motivates you the most?

Gabriel: I’d say my biggest motivation as it comes to music is to my painting is like i’m really just excited i’m really excited to see what else what more I could do and add to it’s like I created some sort of world that I think still needs like a lot of a lot of touch you know. So the motivation is really in the curiosity of it all, yeah and I think I’ve always just had a very high level like work ethic and and so I think I get my gratification from working more and more. So it just feels intertwined with curiosity.  

Erika: So you’re really driven? 

Gabriel: Yeah but it’s Interesting, I guess just normal for me, you know what I mean?

Erika: Yeah, it’s just it’s the passion that drives you, you’re just super passionate about being there and you’re just present and getting your feet on the ground with whatever is in your mind

Gabriel: Absolutely. I would say that that’s like the easiest way to understand that. 

Erika: Yeah, cool. Why is music so important to you and your work? Do you feel like you yourself are a piece of music, like because from what you were telling me before, is that you kind of create these rhythms as you’re walking or, you feel rhythmic. You know how Jackson Pollock used to work? He used to work kind of like a classical music orchestra, moving around his huge canvases, dropping things on them and picking them up or smudging things on it, that to me is very telling of your work in that you’re, moving throughout your body and your body is like a piece of the work. Rather than it just being this two-dimensional thing. 

Gabriel: Yeah, I know what you mean? I would say, definitely, the correlation with the music in my body is that um our bodies are instruments and like I mean for singing, for voice, like that is that’s your instrument, it’s your vocal cords.

 “Like for me, my body’s the instrument, it’s creating the rhythms, and creating the textures, and creating the melodies that you’re talking about.”

 I would say, I don’t know, it’s interesting to think about the question because, I don’t actually think about that question too much, but it’s just true. Something that I’ll touch on real fast, I don’t know if you know this. I learned piano for two and a half years in secret to put on a concert for my fiancé. So I got to get inside of the piano a little bit more to understand how things are working. One of the things that I was always drawn to with one of my favorite composers is Philip Glass, well he’s probably my favorite composer, and a lot of the music that he has composed has polyrhythms. Do you know what that is? 

Erika: No, I’m not versed in music composition or like composing music but I would love to learn. 

Gabriel: Yeah, so polyrhythms. Essentially, I’m okay, so there’s two rhythms happening basically, okay. Like, I’ll give an example, so one of them is a rhythm that’s happening, and again, I’m not what’s called a rhythm but it’s a rhythm, and one of one of my uh a lot of a lot of music that I learned has polyrhythms in it where this this hand has three beats while this hand has two beats at the same time. Songs this hand has four beats, while this hand has three beats, and it creates something that is hypnotic. 

In Philip Glass’s compositions, a lot of times he’s building melodies through rhythm and through polyrhythms. Which is really fascinating, and I guess the idea of like contrast in that there’s like harmē harmony within multiplicity happening, and I relate to that a great deal. And just like how I think, and how that’s manifested in my paintings. So, to answer the question why music might be really important? I think it’s more so about the ethos in which the music is made. It sounds like, for Philip Glass or for some other people, there’s like a connecting thread of energy and spirit that I’m hearing, and what they’re making that I feel like a kinship to, which might be the contemplation, what might be contrast, what might be creating and inventing a language that’s like uniquely your own, or whatever, like that. I just found that there are certain thinkers in different disciplines where I have an overlap, and I find it to be useful to engage in; does that make sense?

 Erika: Do you think studying other artists and cultures is important to you as an artist? 

Gabriel: Without a doubt. Yeah, absolutely. I do that. It’s just more so, I think it makes a ton of sense and it’s very important, actually, for everybody, for every artist, at some point, to probably adopt methods and aesthetics from previous artists as a way to learn. Also, you could probably, what ends up happening is you could probably end up finding yourself in that. What that might look like might mean that, actually, what Monet was doing, that’s kind of like who I am. Like, I want to continue to add to that. I want to continue to build that vocabulary. I guess where I end up on that is more so, it’s like, I’m not kind of, I’m not Monet. I’m not this. Like, I’m more so trying to just blend different things together. But the way that I approach the world is I’m very appreciative of all the different things that are available to me to enjoy. I love looking at Juan Moreau. I like Richard Serra. I like Gerhard Richter. I like whoever. If you name them, I probably, there’s probably something really amazing that I like about them. I think everybody probably has something to learn from. You could probably learn from every artist and every piece of art, you know?

 Erika: Yeah, for sure. As a, I’m an Art Historian, so I studied painting and art history in undergrad. I got my degree in both. As a teacher, I think that my teaching style is very geared towards, informing students of skills, but also, applying those skills and showing artists who apply those skills, being able to inform them of people who have come from the past. The way that I describe my artwork is kind of like memories in time, like capturing memories in time, and that’s basically what I do. I think that comes from a lot of, like, Impressionist and Expressionist painters. That’s who I’m influenced by. But when it comes to my students, I think I like to give them the skills. So learning value charts, learning how to shade, learning what, you know, how a landscape is built. Then applying that and showing how other artists have come before and how that can apply to their work. So, that’s one of the questions that I asked, you know, for art history purposes, because I was curious about your work, how that might look. 

Erika: So how have your relationships with your mentors helped shape your approach to your work?

Gabriel: Let’s see. If you have any mentors that you’re still in contact with. One of them, I actually met when I was working at the Met as a security guard, and it’s more, the things that I learned most from him. One of the things he told me that I never let go of is, he said, ‘Never let anybody tell you who you are and don’t let them define your world for you.’ Amongst many things, he’s told me a lot of things, but the biggest lessons I learned from him, they’re not about aesthetics or color or anything. They’re more so about principles that everything else would grow from. For some reason, up until that point, I was having a hard time understanding how that works in my paintings. It did, but I just couldn’t, it was harder for me to grasp. You know what I mean? When I met him and spoke to him so much, because he’s also an artist and understood who you are and what you stand on and what your principles are, that’s going to navigate. That’s how you’re approaching your paintings. It’s not so separate, you know, unless you really are trying to make it that separate. So I would say that’s probably one of the biggest takeaways from my mentor. His name is Shamba. And yeah, we’re still in touch. That’s one of my OGs. That’s my guy. 

Erika: Yeah, so he’s also a part of your community, and that’s pretty cool, right?

Gabriel: Right, right, right. 

Erika: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, I like to really focus on this idea of the subconscious thoughts. For example, I have a student right now who is on the spectrum. He’s low on the spectrum, low functioning. You give him a prompt, and he can do it from his mind. So, my mentor teacher was trying to get him to do landscape and watercolor, he doesn’t really like to work with paint. He was like, Ms. Elman, you know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of this new Funko Pop of Bob Ross. He was like, I can draw that for you. So he sat down and from his mind drew the Bob Ross Funko Pop, and then put the landscape behind it. He taps into these moments of his inner monologue. You know, it’s interesting. I feel like everyone has these subconscious thoughts and inner monologue. So I just wanted to know how you cultivate and tap into your subconscious thoughts? 

Gabriel: Well, the subconscious is funny because sometimes it’s tough to know what’s coming from your subconscious. 

Erika: For sure.

Gabriel:  And that’s a great question. Actually, I’m going to have to reflect on that.  I haven’t spent much time thinking about that as of late. Whereas, like I was saying years ago, the surrealists were so important to me. That was an aspect that I was actively considering. Whereas recently, whatever is happening subconsciously, I haven’t been asking about it. I’m aware that it’s happening. Your conscious mind is like, oh, yeah, shit, I see that. But your subconscious isn’t really present until you get there. I don’t, I’m aware that my subconscious mind has influence on what I’m doing. Whatever I’m doing is exuding itself from my subconscious. I haven’t allowed my conscious mind to analyze what that looks like and what parts of my life are coming from my subconscious. I’ve kind of just been letting it happen. So I have to actually, so the answer, the brief answer to that right now would be I’ve been passively or inactively allowing my subconscious mind to work and I haven’t been consciously putting an effort into thinking about it. 

Erika: It’s fair. 

Gabriel: Which is kind of ironic, yeah. Through that comes view, because sometimes we have to quiet some parts of our mind to have some things be louder.

Erika:  Right. So what morals and values help guide your creative process? So, how are your core values integrated in your work? How your morals and values guide your creative process, how they’re integrated in your work or personal life? 

Gabriel: Yeah, I would say my morals and values question me, the way that they are a part of my work is that I’m not just I allow them to be questions. That’s the thing with my paintings, t’s more so about asking than answering. It’s more so about experiencing than illustrating and more so about process. Whatever concrete value or morals that I might speak about, there’s almost no way that you would ever legibly see that. At work. 

Erika: For sure.

Gabriel: They’re really just contemplations as I’m working. The way that I’m working it becomes more so about a meditative process that I’m allowing myself to be fully present with some of these thoughts as I’m mixing paint, as I’m putting the paint onto the panels. It’s hard to actually ascertain if the work is about that or is it rather just while I’m working, I’m allowing myself the space to think about these things.

Erika: It’s cool, I’m fascinated. I went abroad for a semester.  I studied art conservation and that’s what I originally wanted to go into. So the science behind art is fascinating to me. What you’re saying is right up my alley.  I understand What you’re saying, and it’s really fascinating. It’s pretty cool, you know. People don’t realize that artists are also, kind of like scientists because we really have to know what we’re mixing, and how these things interact with each other. So that idea of process and the way that you’re going about your process, and really trying to figure out how to get to this end result is really cool. 

Gabriel: Yeah, for sure. I appreciate it, I guess the color that I started with, the pigment that I initially started with, to try to achieve the result of it, just ended up looking like ultramarine blue. Then I found a way to make that happen with the oil paint, with the dehydration process of just Gamsol and Cobalt Dryer. So, the answer to your question, I would be ultramarine blue mixed in a hundred part solvent and pour it out, and I’d be a matte blue. 

Erika: I love that, yeah, great answer. What genre of music do you describe your artwork to be, if any?

Gabriel: It’s hard, I know, okay. All right, if I had to, you know the thing... Okay, I’m gonna give you, I’ll give you a couple of genres. If it was classical, it would be Chopin; it would be my music, my paintings would be Chopin. Yeah, if it was like what they call contemporary classical or whatever, it would be Philip Glass. If it would be rap. It would be the Future, no I’m just kidding. 

Erika: It’s fine if you’re being honest if that would be okay. I mean it’s cool if you’re being honest and that’s fine.

Gabriel: No it was just because I like Future a lot but my work is not Future. Okay, lastly, if it was rock, it would be The Smashing Pumpkins. 

Erika: So, it’s hard to say the genre, But those are a couple of artists that you’re influenced by, right? 

Gabriel: Right