Monica Miller Link (b.1955, American) arrived in Upstate New York in 1976, having studied filmmaking at the University of Utah. She exhibited paintings in the Hudson Valley, Catskills and Capitol District. In the 80s, she was director of the Harmanus Bleecker Center of the Albany Institute of History and Art and produced exhibits for the Readings Against the End of the World. Her mid-life career was on staff for the New York State Assembly Committee on Health while continuing a studio practice, kept private. Joyce Goldstein and Thompson Giroux galleries showed smaller works. Now retired she paints in Columbia County, NY.
STATEMENT
The two-foot square is a very empty space. In it I find what happens with shapes and colors as day moves against night, and together they travel the seasons. A question from Summer is answered by Autumn’s naked reveal. Winter gossips about Spring. Each painting begins with random marks made by cleaning my brush from the painting before. Randomness forms puzzles that resolve as the seasons change around me. The process is slow yet continuous, from one painting to the next, and I expect that it will lead me into unknown territories for a while to come.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026 Laffer Gallery, Schuylerville, NY – Rooted and Rising three-person -oil on wood
2025 Laffer Gallery, Schuylerville, NY – Upstate Artists juried group -oil on wood
2025 Spencertown Academy, Spencertown, NY – Art as Memoir juried group -oil on wood
Awarded honorable mention by Jurors Ian Berry and Sienna Patti.
2025 Eastover Contemporary Art, Lenox MA – Art In the Berkshires Juried Show –oil on wood
2024 Spencertown Academy, Spencertown, NY – Drawn to Precision group -charcoal on paper
2024 Albany Center Gallery, Albany – NY Bloom group -oil on wood
“The visual force of three small paintings by Monica Miller Link are vigorous, yet detailed in their application of paint, all in hard, contrasty tones and colors, making mundane landscapes become emphatic, nuanced statements of craft and form, of heightened observation.” William Jaeger – Albany Times Union, 2024.
2022 Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham NY – Part of the Story group -oil on wood
2019 Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham NY – En Masse 2019 group -oil on wood with gold leaf
2015 Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham NY – En Masse group -watercolor on paper
2013 Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham NY – Slow Down Make Space group -oil on wood
2011 Art Omi, Ghent NY – ReCycle – ReCreate – ReImagine group -oil on wood in window shutter
2010 Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham NY – Diary of a Trespasser solo -oil on wood
“An extraordinary exhibition of jewel-like paintings… And, oh, how Miller paints the water! It swirls, shimmers and shines… it flows silently under the cover of dusk… it freezes and refracts into rainbow colors… it threatens to rearrange the landscape.” David Brickman – Get Visual.com, 2010.
EARLY CAREER
- 1979 onward- Exhibited in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley, including Hamm-Brickman Gallery; the Rice Gallery of the Albany Institute of History and Art; the Catskill and Mountaintop galleries of the Green County Council on the Arts, and Firlefanz Gallery among others – mostly watercolor on paper.
- Co-owner /operator, Ted Gallery, Albany NY 1990–91.
- Director, Harmanus Bleecker Center of the Albany Institute of History and Art, 1984–87. Offering exhibitions and studio art classes to adults and children.
- Exhibit producer, Readings Against the End of the World, Albany NY 1984–86.
- Producer /artist, Push Comes to Shove Hellbent for Leather, an animated 16mm film awarded by the San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival in 1981. Screened at the Bilbao International
