Miles Laventhall

I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. The memories of when Art first imbedded itself in my life began with mesmerizing visits to the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and receiving a canvas and set of oil paints when I was four. It took a few more years to understand why, when I asked my mother for a coloring book and crayons, she gave me a blank pad, brush, six tempura paints, and encouraged me to draw my own lines and to learn to mix color. The single, most important epiphany that lives in me to this moment, that drives my soul, my work...happened while shoeing horses and laying pipeline on  Mount Auduban in the Rocky Mountains. There began my lifelong fascination with ever changing colors of mountains and celestial skies, forests and everything made of trees, and steel. In 1971 I ended a pre-law track, and left college with the determination to make Art my core, and not look back. My wife, Kathie and my children, Lisa and Tony, were the source of compassion and fortitude, needed for the next twenty years of producing paintings and sculpture for major corporations and collectors throughout North America. I had the great fortune to be represented by Tibor de Nagy and learned much about the Art world through his eyes. He encouraged me to create what I had to, to survive, but not lose my soul and primary reasons for making art. My perception evolved from a gentrified view of Art as a privileged commodity, to Art as a human necessity; to affirm oneself, to share, to communicate.  This became my “pay it forward”, my “raison d’ être. I returned to college to complete a summa cum laud, MFA degree to teach, and share Art with a passion; to enable every person to experience joy and fulfillment, creating Art.