Biography
Born in San Francisco, Miriam Hitchcock grew up on the peninsula in a nature loving family of four children. Art making was a constant childhood activity and the music and Art scene of the sixties and seventies counter culture significantly impacted her High School and College experience, shaping her commitment to make Art. Miriam attended Cañada Community College and went on to a BFA in Art from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Moving east, Miriam completed her MFA in Painting from Yale University and began supporting herself teaching studio courses in New England. Miriam has taught painting, drawing, and design at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Cornell University where she was an Assistant Professor of Art.
Returning to California in 1990, to live in Santa Cruz, she taught at Stanford University, San Jose State University, and was a member of the UCSC Art Department teaching Painting and Drawing from 1992 to 2012. Drawn to places of deep human history, Miriam designed and led Intensive Art Studio courses in Rome, Italy through the Cornell University and The American University in Rome.
In 2010, Miriam began to incorporate video and time based media into her life-long painting practice. Miriam currently exhibits her work nationally without gallery representation. She recently began participating in International Film festivals, winning Best Experimental Film in the 2018 Annual Copenhagen Film Festival, Denmark, and an honorable mention in Calcutta India. Long associated with the Pierogi Gallery Flat Files, in NYC, her paintings and animations have never been shown in NYC.
Artist Statement
My studio practice is a means of understanding the ordinary and illuminating the familiar. I think of these eccentrically shaped paintings as “assembled landscapes”. They are hybrids – aligned with both the traditions of figure and landscape painting, while also richly informed by the language of abstraction.
My approach to composition is rooted in the displacement and fragmentation which I view as inherent in both contemporary life and landscape. In some paintings these qualities are amplified by anachronistic features, reflecting my fascination with the experience of time and non–linear narratives.
Art at Kings Oaks 