Miriam Colman (pronouns: she/her) is a queer Buddhist artist hailing from the Pacific Northwest. Best known for her intricate abstract drawings, Miriam has displayed her work on the set of Season 8 of Portlandia.
Usually working with fountain pens on paper and occasionally felt tip pens on wood, Miriam’s art features mainly birds and flowers as the main actors in each scene. Self-taught, her characters are hidden in cascades of vines and other natural elements, creating scenes that explore topics arising from living half in the closet. Currently, Miriam lives and works in Redmond.
Emerging
Ink on paper. 20.5″ x 28.25″.
Exhibited at Rainbow on the Eastside 2024.
This is one of my pieces that are inspired by Chinese Blue and White ceramics and is structured similarly to “Red” (2017), featuring a triumphant phoenix rising from their struggle and reaching new heights. “Emerging” represents the immense joy and relief I felt in mid June 2023, when I finally made it to the tail end of struggling with what turned out to be an 8 month long kidney infection that wrecked my life. A tendril of the struggle still tries to cling on in the form of a vine wrapped around the central bird and all the consequences of that period of struggle, but the lotuses are a reminder that beauty emerges from mud and the cicadas symbolize how rebirth requires great patience.
Nesting
Ink on paper. 20.5″ x 28.25″.
Exhibited at Rainbow on the Eastside 2024.
This is largely an homage to one of my older pieces, “Shiny Objects” (2017), a scene of two birds in a state of peace, staring intensely at each other as if nothing else exists. This is the first large scale Blue and White piece I’ve done that uses my forest style of completely filling in all the space with floral motifs. I feel it creates a sense of seclusion, safety, privacy, and coziness. The couple is just focusing on themselves and their family, surrounded by abundance and prosperity.
It’s Raining Again
Sailor “Kiwa-guro” and Iroshizuku “Takesumi” inks on Borden & Riley paper. 12″x16″.
Exhibited at Rainbow on the Eastside 2023. SOLD.
TW: Domestic and child abuse, suicide
When I was little and unaware of the interpersonal context that I was born into, I loved my dad more than anyone else in the world. I knew he could yell loudly, slam doors, punch walls and people, but that angry man felt like someone I didn’t know. Just a stranger who would rudely interrupt car rides or leave me to bring my dolls to comfort my crying mother.
The angry side of him wasn’t “my dad,” the man who praised me beyond the heavens, always wanted to spend time with me, and gave huge warm hugs. I didn’t realize the anger in him could turn on me. But it did. It did when I was an infant before I kept any memories. It did when I was 6 and he angrily told me he didn’t want to see me anymore and maintained that position for three years. And it became even more frequent when I was in my teens as I realized it wasn’t just me and my mom that he was angry towards, but every person in his life that he knew for more than a moment. “My dad” was entirely replaced by this angry man. I tried fixing him. I tried parenting him. I tried bargaining. I tried arguing and even therapy, but eventually exhausted and destroyed enough already, it was my turn to cut him out of my life.
And while I mourned as if “my dad” had died, I also waited in terror for years, fearing he would commit suicide without me in his life. He had already told me at age 9 that is what he would do when he turned 50. He figured since I’d be in my early twenties by then that I wouldn’t need him around, and casually said that was the only reason he was still alive.
Seriously, never tell a child that. Ever. Or anyone. It’s not devotional. It is manipulative and cruel.
But 50 came and went without hearing any news, and I felt so much relief. Like maybe he was getting better and maybe he wouldn’t actually try to kill himself. But I still kept hearing stories of him playing out the exact same destructive relationship patterns, so I knew not enough had changed.
And then finally, in April 2019, the news I had been expecting up until about five years earlier finally came. He was unsuccessful, but I was still devastated and disappointed, and even felt abandoned and manipulated all over again.
So I drew “It’s Raining Again”, where a lotus bud remains unopened under a rainy sky, while one bird sits on one lotus leaf, looking sadly at the empty lotus leaf on the other side of the scene. In the brambles below, other birds’ heads can be seen watching the situation, but staying uninvolved.
Black Sheep
Iroshizuku “Yamabudo” ink on Tomoe River paper and white gel ink on black paper. 8″x10″.
Exhibited at Rainbow on the Eastside 2023. $150. To purchase, contact hello@thegardenofbirds.com
TW: Homophobia
When the live action remake of Beauty and the Beast came out in 2017, I was still living with my parents right after college, and I overheard my stepdad banning my younger brothers from seeing the movie purely because Gaston’s sidekick had a crush on him and that was too explicit for my teenage brothers.
I was furious, but since I was still relying on my parents for support right after college, I was also powerless to even express how upset this made me. So at night, I took every photo of myself hanging everywhere downstairs and destroyed them all (it was never noticed or at least commented on) and drew “Black Sheep”, as a way to express fury in a language only I understood and could safely display.
This is the only piece I have where the bird is inversed, drawn in white ink on black paper.
