Southern California's No. 1 Golf Source
STROKE OF THE DAY |
"The players themselves can be classified into two groups- the attractions and the entry fees." |
-Jimmy Demaret |
SITE
SEARCH
GOLF
CALENDAR
PEOPLE
|
||||
|
Michelangelo said that he didn’t create sculptures, he just set them free from the rock that imprisoned them. Golf course architecture seems to do the same thing for Michael Miller. As a golf professional for nearly 30 years, Miller used to play the course. Now, as a golf landscape artist, he paints them. Since 1996, the former head pro at Riviera Country Club has re-created more than 100 golf holes with a 19th century style that emphasizes classic technique, texture and color interpretation. Fifty of them were commissioned for a book he co-authored, “The Art of Golf Design” (Wiley, 2001, $35). The 60-year-old Miller’s career move from the pro shop to the artist’s studio came by way of the lesson tee. “Do you remember Barbara and David Parmelee at Mountain Gate?” Miller asked during a recent lunch interview. The name didn’t ring a bell. Miller asked because I was a member there during his tenure as head pro from 1981-’93. “One day in 1985, after giving the Parmelees a lesson, they invited me to their house for a glass of wine,” Miller said. “Barbara was a painter, I was admiring her work that adorned their walls. She asked me if I ever tried painting. ‘Naw, I can’t paint,’ I told her. ‘I can’t even draw a straight line.’ She said, ‘that’s almost never necessary. Anyone can paint who wants to.’ The next day she took me to an art store. I bought my first paints and began taking lessons from her.” The more Miller painted, the more he loved the freedom of expression. He took classes at UCLA Extension and the Brentwood Art Studio. Then he met Gene Mako, an art dealer and former Davis Cup tennis player who partnered with Don Budge to win the U.S. Open doubles title twice in the 1930s. “I became Gene’s only student,” Miller said. The 19th century painting techniques were for him “representational rather than photographic realism.” As enthusiastically as he used to teach golf, he explained how that particular style “has imposto,” which means you can see and feel the different thicknesses of the paint. “There isn’t an emphasis to hide brush stokes. It’s more about conveying the feeling of the landscape.” Miller’s first landscape paintings were of his favorite golf courses — Pine Valley, Pebble Beach, Cypress Point and Augusta National. Since these courses were built between 1910 and 1940, Miller had only black-and-white archival photos to study the features of that period. But that’s where the realism ends. When it comes time to put paint on canvas, Miller says he has “total artistic latitude when painting the environmental elements, such as time of day, season, weather conditions and ambient light.” During his years as Riviera’s head pro (1993-’98), he painted every free moment he wasn’t at the course. Eventually, Geoff Shackelford, a young golf writer and historian whom Miller had known since he was a young player at Riviera, heard about Miller’s talents. Shackelford was writing his first book, “The Captain,” about course architect George Thomas, who designed Riviera, L.A. Country Club and Bel-Air, to name a few. Shackelford’s idea was to illustrate the cover of his book with a painting rather than a photograph. He asked Miller to “paint the cover.” So eight years after buying his first tube of paint, Miller’s work was on the cover of a book. Shackelford’s idea worked. A couple of years later, Sleeping Bear Press approached them for another golf design book. But this time they wanted all the illustrations to be paintings. Miller was commissioned to paint 50 for the book, “The Art of Golf Design.” This time Miller was the co-author. Shackelford, the son of former UCLA basketball star Lynn Shackelford, went on to write 10 books and is considered a top golf course historian. Miller says it takes about two to three weeks to paint one of his pictures, which range in price from $3,000 to $18,000. He is so respected that a collection of his work has been on exhibit at the USGA Golf House and the Golf Hall of Fame. Miller is currently selling the originals used in “The Art of Golf Design” from $2,500 to $7,500, with a 36-inch by 48-inch oil on canvas selling for $4,500. He also sells signed and numbered prints starting at $150. As golf’s attention focuses this month on The Masters, look at Miller’s interpretation of the 12th hole at Augusta National. Most other depictions focus on Hogan’s Bridge, but that’s not even included in Miller’s work. Instead, he captures the density of the forest behind the green and the penal bunkers with their crushed white marble sheen that guard the tiny green that slopes toward Rae’s Creek. To see more of Miller’s work, visit golfclubatlas.com and click Art & Architecture. You can also contact him at mgmart@sbcglobal.net. SG Eric Tracy is also known as The Mulligan Man. He can be reached at eric@themulliganman.com. |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This Article
