Deanna Izen Miller is opening her brand-new gallery in Palm Desert on Saturday, Feb. 18.
She’s bringing decades of experience and art knowledge to the new Izen Miller Gallery on El Paseo. Miller has been an art dealer for 37 years; she opened her first gallery in Venice, Calif., and had a stint at The River in Rancho Mirage. The new Palm Desert gallery will feature artists from all over the United States—some of whom she has represented for three decades—as well as six local contemporary artists she recently added to her list.
The new Izen Miller Gallery’s first exhibition is called Multiplicity: The Eye of the Artists, and will include works by the artists Miller represents. It will be on display through Sunday, March 26.
Miller expressed excitement about both her new El Paseo location and the local artist community.
“After moving here four years ago … I met several artists from the Coachella Valley, who I am beginning to develop a relationship with,” she said. “When I opened my gallery, I had met so many artists—and I know how important it is to show local artists. I selected the artists whose art I felt works with the direction my gallery is going in.”
Two Coachella Valley artists will be highlighted in Multiplicity: Ruth Gonzales and Barry Orleans.
With explosive color, Barry Orleans expresses cheerful tones through abstract imagery, while Ruth Gonzales paints shapes beneath and throughout compositional fields that seem to awaken emotion.
“Barry is an emerging artist, and Ruth is mid-career,” Miller said. “Their color, light, form and sensibility work with my gallery and the image I want to portray.”
Barry Orleans’ bold and luminous colors can brighten anyone’s day, and bring out a smile. The self-taught artist notes that his paintings are about “movement, color and space.”
Miller said Orleans focuses on the paint itself as his subject. “His brushless application of paint creates the sensation of color, texture and motion. His canvases become about the action in the art.”
Ruth Gonzales’ paintings have influences from Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt’s light, and Rufino Tamayo’s color and form.
Gonzales was born in Mexico and began as a figurative painter; her knowledge of structure and technique is easily spotted in her current abstract work. She has lived in the desert since 1990, and her art has been in many galleries and sold internationally. One of Gonzales’ themes is how human temperament interacts with and is influenced by nature. While making her mixed-media paintings, she at times incorporates marble dust and sand with raw pigment oils. In this way, her art brings the viewer closer to nature, and also to the universal spirit of humankind.
Miller said viewers can be “transformed” by Gonzales’ work.
“The work is not about expressionism, impressionism or minimalism, but an abstract thought, somewhere in between,” Miller said. “But it is very tangible.”
Izen Miller Gallery will celebrate its grand opening from 6 to 8 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 18, at 73740 El Paseo, in Palm Desert. Multiplicity: The Eye of the Artists will be on display through Sunday, March 26. For more information, call 760-898-0223, or visit izenmillergallery.com. Below: “Flight of the Mumble Bees” by Ruth Gonzales.
