Meet Forrest Miller

Today we’d like to introduce you to Forrest Miller. 

Hi Forrest, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in Bay City, Michigan. I have four brothers, and we all loved sports. I played football, soccer, and basketball. And from a very young age, I loved to draw. My Mom would take us to church, and I would draw the Stations of the Cross during Mass. I was obsessed with making my drawings accurate and realistic. My parents were college professors, and they provided me with a wide variety of art history books. When we travelled, we always visited art museums, from the Detroit and Philadelphia Art museum to the New York Metropolitan Museum of New York and the National Cowboy & Western Museum in Oklahoma City. Those visits fueled my artistic ambitions. I also started taking adult drawing classes at 14 from (Art Prize winner) Chris Laporte when he was teaching at Studio 23 in Bay City. I did my first large commission at 14, religious drawings for a Catholic credit union. They paid me well, and I used the money to go to basketball camp out of state. 

I went to Western High School, where my main art teacher was Mark Piotrowski, not only a great teacher but a working and exhibiting artist. He taught me that art was fun, yes, but that you also had to develop a very strong work ethic to be a good artist. I grew as an artist, using mainly acrylic and sketching. I continued to work with Mark at Delta College and also learned so much from another very well-known artist and professor, Larry Butcher, who laid a strong foundation for my love of painting. I transferred from Delta to Kendall College of Art & Design, where I earned a degree in Illustration in 2013. I had some excellent professors, but Jon McDonald, who taught my first class in oil painting was definitely my favorite. He is a very well-known artist throughout the country, so advice and guidance from him was huge for my confidence. 

During my years at Kendall, I started working in 2011 at the B.O.B. in downtown Grand Rapids, a large entertainment and restaurant complex. The B.O.B. managers contracted me to design a beer label and provided me with great locations for my paintings to be hung in Art Prize, a huge art festival and competition in Grand Rapids. I exhibited and sold my work at Art Prize, Greater Western Michigan Art exhibition, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, and at Midland Center for the Arts. I was also commissioned by Delta College to do major donor pencil sketches. In the past few years, I have been drawn to painting landscapes, painting forests in different seasons. The challenge of making the viewer feel like they enter the summer or winter forest takes a long time to paint, as I paint very detailed, but I love the work when it is finished. 

Artists need to challenge ourselves to take on new forms of art. I was a skilled pencil artist in portraiture, but I had not worked much in pastels. My Mom mentioned to me early in 2022 that the Governor Whitmer kidnap trial was coming up in federal court in Grand Rapids soon and suggested I get in touch with television stations to see if they needed a court artist. A group of men were charged with conspiring to kidnap the governor. I started contacting news organizations and Fox 17 Grand Rapids hired me and eventually others, and I started my court sketch career. Using pastels, I sketched daily for a period of five weeks over two trials. My sketches were featured on Fox 17, UpNorthlive television, and WXYZ in Detroit, as well as CNN and the CBS Evening News. My sketches were featured in the New York Post and Daily Mail, and M-Live Michigan newspapers. From this experience, I learned I can work under time pressure to create accurate drawings that help illustrate key players in a trial. It was a fascinating experience, and I definitely want to continue my work as a court artist. 

As an artist, I challenge myself to get better every day and to see the world with an artist’s eyes. I am grateful for all who helped me to do this. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Every artist struggle in their own unique way. My life has definitely had its ups and downs but creating keeps me positive and optimistic about the future. For me, there has also been the balancing between wanting very large swaths of time to make art and also needing to make a living and pay bills. Very few have the privilege of being a full-time artist. I hope to be able to do that someday, but I manage the balance. Painting and drawing, for me is also a great way of mentally processing tough times like losing a loved one. I have lost a brother, a grandmother, and two uncles in just the last four years. Painting has helped me get through those times. When I was in third grade, I struggled with intracranial hypertension, too much spinal fluid on the brain. I spent a year in and out of hospitals until they successfully did surgery in Detroit and saved my eyesight. This experience made me appreciate my eyesight, and I felt grateful that I could still draw. All the bad times of my life have only made me more determined to be successful doing what I love most. 

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I specialize in the art of realism, primarily in very detailed landscapes and portraits. In college, I experimented using watercolor, watercolor gouache, and colored pencils, but no medium could compete with my love for oil paint. So, since graduation in 2013, oil paint has been my main medium. I have been drawing realistically since I was very young, so that was really the base for my career in painting. Many of my teachers talked about how you have to be a master with the pencil before you can be a master with a brush, and I know now that is true. I challenge myself when it comes to my art along several pathways. I enjoy the challenge of painting new environments, whether that be my beautiful home state of Michigan or anywhere else on land, ocean, and even space. My exhibitions have ranged across all kinds of landscapes. 

Portrait art has always been a huge part of my focus as well. I drew many pencil portraits for Delta College’s major donor gallery. In 2020 I oil painted a portrait of Jon Hall, the founder of Glastender Inc for his book “Rebel without Applause” which documented his journey becoming CEO of his great company. All this experience gave me confidence to take on freelance portrait commissions, something I hope to do more in the future. In 2022, I applied this experience with portraits and was hired by FOX 17 in Grand Rapids to do court sketches of the Governor Whitmer Kidnapping Trial in federal court. It was an overwhelming experience for the first few days, sketching so fast, but I gained confidence quickly, and I loved the charged courtroom atmosphere. I used charcoal and pastel. I also court sketched the retrial of that case later this year, working with Upnorthlive, Mlive, The Daily Mail, CNN, and CBS Evening News. It was an amazing experience that is without a doubt the biggest highlight of my career so far. Painting is such a patient process, so it was exciting to do daily court sketching. You must make high-quality color sketches fast and ready to be used in news coverage right away. I am ready for my next opportunity to court sketch a trial in Michigan or elsewhere. What I’m proud of most in my career is my dedication to creating art and my willingness to go after new artistic opportunities and work to master those challenges. Being an artist means you must have a willingness to reinvent yourself. 

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is continuing to develop my own unique style in landscapes and portraits.  My goal is to get consistent freelance commissions in many subject matters, but success to me as an artist, and what keeps me motivated is to make people happy with a drawing or painting of their loved ones. I would also love to have more success in the field of court sketch art and work more exciting trials. 

Pricing:

• Pencil Portrait Single Portrait -$150 2 Person Portrait-$300 Family Portraits – $500 or higher
• Pastel Portrait Single Portrait – $250 2 Person Portrait -$400 Family Portraits- $600 or higher
• 16 x 16 inch 16 x 20 inch or 18 x 24 inch Oil Painting Portrait Single Portrait – $300 2 Person Portrait $500 Family Portrait – $800 or higher
• I can make a variety of types of commissioned paintings or drawings specialized for you. Shipping is not included in these prices.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: forrestmillerart
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/1698110143/