Artist Biography

Mila Libman was born in Minsk, Belarus and immigrated to the US in 1988. She studied graphic design at Montclair State University, continued her art training at the New York Studio School, and received her MFA in 1997 from Yale University. Mila currently lives in works in San Jose, CA.

Libman begins her process by taking photographs in the Sierras, and then distorts the photographs until she arrives at the images that she wants to recreate in her drawings. Ultimately allowing the drawing process to take its own form of representation. Libman creates her works using a subtractive process. Evolving her medium from pastels and charcoal, most of her drawings are made with dry pigments rubbed over large sheets of paper and erasing a pattern into the medium; lifting pigment and revealing the paper to create a pattern of light.

“My ultimate goal is to arrive at the place when the drawing leaves me with a sense of wonder, the same feeling that I have when I take photographs of nature in the first place. I’m not trying to imitate reality, but to create reality from within.”

In 1993 Libman was awarded The Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship. Mila’s work has been exhibited at various venues in the Bay Area, including Berkeley Art Center, SJICA, Art Ark Gallery, 01 San Jose Biennial, Red Ink Gallery and Los Altos Museum. She’s also exhibited in New York, NY, Belfast, ME, and New Haven, CT.