Claire Milner

British artist Claire Milner was famously commissioned to create the Blue Marilyn portrait for Rihanna, widely featured by the global media, but her personal body of work is made up of paintings inspired by her time spent in Africa focusing on social and environmental issues. In May 2023 Milner was selected as one of fewer than ten artists worldwide for Active Membership of the Gallery Climate Coalition, along with several blue chip galleries, institutions and museums. Her work was selected by the conference organisers to be exhibited in the Blue Zone of COP26.
She works in collections which are continuously evolving around the theme of nature, our place within it and encroachment upon it. Environmental references such as climate change and mass extinction have been the central focus of her image making for more than two decades. Her artworks include diverse mediums including paint, paper and collage, and as a signifier of her familial ties to Italy, she sometimes incorporates the ancient art of mosaic - famous for animal depictions – and crystal methodologies as a symbiosis of past and present. Her portrayal of animals’ interchanges between the metaphoric and the literal, yet the impact of humanity remains implicit, even when the...

EDUCATION & TRAINING
BA Hons Graphic Design, Coventry
Foundation In Art & Design, Harrogate
Elaine M. Goodwin Mosaic Summer School, London
Mosaic Workshop Course, London

BIOGRAPHY
Milner’s work has raised large funds for conservation and environmental organisations. In 2015 Burning Bright (True Value Collection) created with 32,000 Swarovski crystals representing ten times the number of tigers left in the wild, was exhibited at Hotel Café Royal, auctioned at The Savoy Hotel, London, and sold to an art collector in Germany via Paddle8 in aid of Save Wild Tigers, The Born Free Foundation and The Environmental Investigation Agency. In 2016 Milner's crystal mosaic portrait of an elephant-poaching victim Delicate And Mighty (True Value Collection) was sold to a collector in New York in aid of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi. In November 2017 the artist's mixed media painting entitled The Unknown (Holocene Twilight Collection) commissioned by actress and animal activist Virginia McKenna was auctioned in aid of the Born Free Foundation and sold to actress and activist Joanna Lumley. In December 2017, Milner's painting entitled Ocean Rainforest (Anthropocene Extinction Collection) featuring coral reefs and sea turtl...

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & ART FAIRS
2023
’Gardeners of Eden’ Noon Powell Fine Art, London (Solo Show)
2022
Breathing Out: A Climate Change Exhibition, The ArtCan Virtual Gallery, curated by Catherine Fenton, Lawrence Mathias and Hannah Pratt.
Shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Wonderment. Noon-Powell Fine Art, Notting Hill, London
Shrine Gallery New York. Artist Open Call GROUP SHOW - Digital Exhibition
The Curator’s Salon: A Thousand Words Virtual Exhibition
ArtCan and La Condamine: Notre Temps | Our Time Curated Virtual Exhibition
Sketch for Survival Exhibition, The Crypt Gallery, Norwich
Create! Magazine Global Online Exhibition juried and curated by Gita Joshi
David Shepherd Wildlife Art, home of Wildlife Artist of the Year: Logging the Leuser chosen as Friday Feature
2020
Painting of the Day: Chosen by Contemporary British Painting, an artist led organisation which explores and promotes current trends in British painting.2017 Artivism Challenge Miami Art Week
2017 Beyond the Bars, Royal Horticultural Halls, London
2015 Save Wild Tigers, The Savoy Hotel, London
2015 Be Inspired, curated by Christian Furr, Hotel Cafe Royal, London
2015 Selected to participate in the X Edition of the Florence Bie...