A Land Near and Far: Elisabeth Ladwig & Shane Miller

Art & Light Gallery presents A Land Near and Far, a two-person exhibition of work by Elisabeth Ladwig (New Paltz, N.Y.) and Shane Miller (Nashville, T.N.) launching on the Art & Light website and in the gallery at 10am on Tuesday, April 1st with an opening reception on Friday, April 4th from 6-8pm.

Elisabeth Ladwig is a photographic artist living in the Hudson Valley, where the local ecology offers endless inspiration for her multi-layered creative process. Her work explores modern surrealism, each image a composite of dozens of photographs. Shoots in her studio capture the subject and other staged bits, while photos of landscapes, flora, and fauna are collected on her travels and dedicated field trips. Ladwig loves to find vintage props and costumes, and may handcraft parts of a scene when the image calls for it. Through themes of perception and introspection, her work invites us to curate our unique journeys as we discover our place in the natural world.

Shane Miller (Nashville, TN) is a self-taught artist whose work explores the emotions of dreams, distant memories, and silent emotions left unexpressed. He depicts landscapes of the mind in a quiet visual language that allows the viewer to reflect on their experience of the natural world. Miller seeks to create a feeling of longing and melancholy in his work by using a neutral color palette and thin, wispy washes of translucent oil paint.

In A Land Near and Far Shane Miller’s ethereal paintings and Elisabeth Ladwig’s surrealist photography come together for a closer look at internal landscapes, where past, present, and possibility meet in a moment of revelation. The work represents a visual journey into elusive spaces where the familiar feels distant and the distant feels intimate. Miller and Ladwig investigate familiar scenes that shift and transform as the viewer lingers, slipping away from definitive understanding and reminding us that our perceptions are not anchored in time and space, but are reinterpreted with the passage of time, shaped by our emotions, imaginations, and ever-evolving individuality.