MILLER-HAVENS ART
Testimonials
Zooming Out 2022
"I want to meet on the Zoom screen where people can reach into the next rectangle and rest their elbows there or touch the person next to them. These are really wonderful paintings"
Steven Seidel, Senior Lecturer Director, Arts In Education
Senior Research Associate, Project Zero
Harvard University School of Education
Commission Leopoldina en el Oro - 2017
"The painting is heart-achingly beautiful! The juxtaposition between the shimmer of her gold dress and the sad/stillness of her face is amazing."
Shari Tishman, Ed.D. Lecturer, Harvard Graduate, School of Education
Director, Project Zero, Arts in Education Program at Harvard Project Zero
"I have several Miller-Havens pieces. The wide arc of her work is stunning and a testament to her interest and wonder of the world around her. Do yourself a favor and pick up a work to grace your home - the longer you have it, the more you'll love it."
Dorothy Walter, 2016 - Art Collector, Colorado
"The more we discussed painting, the more we felt an affinity and mutual appreciation for how much our respective talents flowed from our fingers. I loved the painting, which is entitled El Orgullo y la Determinación (“Pride and Determination”).
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"Susan’s painting holds a secret, a softer side of me stayed hidden, like Susan’s flowers. Behind every big-league pitcher stands the real person, each with his own story to tell of resilience and an offering of hope."
Pedro Martinez, HOF Pitcher, 2015
"Susan's work is truly amazing.
I am honored once again, that one of the portraits she painted of me has been selected for installation in."
Carlton Fisk, HOF Catcher, November 6, 2014
"She is one of the very few artists who gets down into the soul of her subject and brings that aspect to life on canvas ... remarkably so."
Pat Riley, President Miami HEAT, Miller-Havens Patron
"Sport as subject matter in contemporary painting is hardly an unknown, but it commonly encourages images of the utmost banality and vulgarity. From this venue Miller-Havens is many worlds apart. Her new work is trenchant, pointed, haunting. She takes a simple form such as a catcher's mask or a baseball glove and paints it with knowledge and with love so that it is at the same time a potent icon and a humble object -- as both it is beautiful, and that is her gift. Her work is beyond genre because she is a superb editor and inventor."
James Wilson Rayen, Elizabeth Christy Kopf Professor of Art, Wellesley College
"What an impressive collection. I am not sure that I will be as easy as 'Pudge,' but I can't wait to see the finished product. Most of the work that I have seen done of baseball players is a totally different style.
When this gets done, I will be sure to show it off, and since all athletes like looking at themselves, you will be beating them off with a stick."
Mike Matheny, June 30, 2000
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"The artist paints most of these portraits from the back, where the slump of a woman's shoulder or the attentiveness in a dog's alert stance can speak volumes about the bonds of a cherished relationship. The artist luxuriates in the color white, balancing myriad subtle shades in both the clothing and the dog's fur. The portraits are set against a background of soft gray, thrusting these relationships out of the temporal and suggesting a connection that is timeless and enduring"
Mary Jo Palumbo, Arts Reporter, Boston Herald Newspaper
For ARTnews Magazine, New York City
"The artist paints most of these portraits from the "Miller-Havens work allows the viewer to participate directly in the action portrayed by visually isolating that action and in the richness of the gestural painted mark."
Douglas Hilson, Professor of Art, Hofstra Museum Hofstra University
"If you like art and sports, check the web site for Susan Miller-Havens (millerhavens.com). The Boston-based artist has done a number of brilliant commissioned portraits, including one that the Smithsonian Institute is trying to purchase."
Peter Gammons, ESPN, September 2000
Co-Donor (with Gloria Gammons) of Martinez Portrait to The National Portrait Gallery 2011
"Susan Miller-Havens addresses in her oil paintings several important themes, most especially the depiction of the usually isolated figure as male athlete in a context that transcends the specifics of time, place and commercial trivialization. The depiction of the male athlete in terms of aesthetic beauty achieved the sublime in the sculpture of ancient Greece as created by male artists. Miller-Havens seeks to add a new voice to this subject-matter, looking at the contemporary male athlete on a two dimensional plane, with a 20th century perspective, while exploring representational and abstract artistic concerns. She works toward stirring in the viewer a sense of ambiguity, timelessness and a feeling of human connection with the painting. This results in transcending specifics suggested by the individual ball player."
Sydney L. Waller, Co-curator "Diamonds Are Forever,"
an internationally-touring exhibition
The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Program
Arts Administrator, The New York State Historical Association
"I cannot believe how wonderfully you captured the "poodle himself" as well as our close relationship. The Series (Women's Best Friends) as a whole is incredibly touching and speaks loudly about a kind of friendship that is nearly impossible to describe."
Claudia Logan, Author and Model For This Series
"Susan Miller-Havens captures the heroic qualities in all her portraits and figure studies with a palette that includes the most subtle of color combinations. Her paintings are as much about the magic of color as the essence of heroism in her subjects."
Richard A. Johnson, Curator, The Sports Museum of New England
"I found one painting, # 6 [of the Women's Best Friend Series], in particular that I consider to be absolutely stunning. Even when I analyze it in the broadest and most formal "art terms" that I know, it holds up beautifully. I've become quite prejudiced. I think it's more enchanting than most contemporary work that I've looked at recently. I see it as a figurative painting with different psychological interpretations while, at the same time, I can read it as an interesting abstract piece."
Fay Chandler, Artist,
Founder, The Art Connection, Boston
"There is such life in your paintings: motion, emotion,the sadness of lost youth and the joy of recognition. I cannot tell you how much I see in them or am amazed by your picking subjects which women are not supposed to understand and making us all understand them better. Truly amazing work. The only other time I saw a painting and had tears in my eyes was when I saw Guernica in Madrid"
Alan R. Spievack, M.D. Patron
Founder, Vice President and Director of Technology, ACELL, INC.
Researchers in regenerative medicine technology