Michael Paul Miller, a Seattle-based painter, Peninsula college professor and University of Wisconsin MFA graduate, is not inclined to disparage your interpretations of his work with analogies to “I Am Legend” and “Book of Eli.” He wouldn’t be vexed by any attempts at interpretation for that matter, but his claim to the post-modernism movement is predominantly dark and mysterious — stemming from a blend of a childhood infatuation with explosions, aircraft and tanks, modern culture, politics and life — and a continual work in progress since his days studying in Madison.

Miller grew up in rural Wisconsin and received his undergraduate degree from the UW-Oshkosh in graphic communications with the intention of pursuing a financially stable career. After all, artists looking to make a career of their work in modern times are relegated to Ramen noodles and dinner at McDonald’s. Despite that notion, he painted and worked for a year after graduation before applying to graduate school at the UW-Madison for painting.

“There I was studying under four or five professors. For the most part, their work was quite a bit different from what my work was, but they were able to help me think about what I was doing with my art work as far as aspects that relate to the conceptual,” Miller said.

There is an evident disconnect between his claimed military-inspired themes and the rural landscapes and stretches of highway that reach into the horizon commonly present in his oil paintings. Literal indications of the military are virtually non-existent, while rustic scenery buttressing the focus on pedestrian figures and smoke pervade throughout most works.

The thickets and farmland with the intentional semblance of rural Wisconsin are common denominators of the dark, with stretching streets and the charcoal black smoke wafting behind centralized realistic figures, who could as likely possess a Social Security number and respective passports as could be someone you’ve passed on the street.

But these pictorial identities are fictitious (autobiographical at best), and tools within the realism behind portraitures within Michael Paul Miller’s post-apocalyptic landscapes.

Clicking on the option “Early Works” under his website-cum-resume lists paintings of heavily applied paint and forceful brush strokes that delineate an almost animalistic human being in various shades of skin color, from a pure heavenly white to a beastly fur-like deep red.

“I wasn’t necessarily interested in realism at that time when describing whether it’s figure or the landscape for that matter,” Miller said. “I think it was during this time that I was experimenting more with the application of paint and its buttery consistency. These works have paint that actually protrudes from the canvas up to an inch in certain areas, and there might be raw canvas exposed in different parts of the painting.”

Although figures and landscape are individually delineated, the details of the landscape and heavy, brutal application of paint often camouflage the centralized figures into the background.

Miller emphasizes that his art is continually progressive, while change in his style is inevitable. As of the moment, he is satisfied by his current works.

“I consider it more as a postmodern art movement that is based in new symbolism and realism and kind of a union between those two because of the metaphorical references in my painting,” Miller said.

Respectively, his current work is a far cry from his older studies that date back to 2005 and earlier, which captured the essence of the primordial being within nude figures to illuminate the relationship between nature and people.

“I was not interested in clothing but more interested in certain aspects of the individual and maybe in existentialism to a certain degree and the connectiveness to the landscape itself in terms that are more immediate and less artificial because of the innovation of clothing,” Miller said.

Having taken a day job as a professor and unresponsive to requests for commissions, Miller’s work is stemmed from unadulterated inspiration, taking up to three months from concept to finished product. However, his efforts have been well recognized with grants and shows in Wisconsin museums and galleries in New York City. Despite his myriad of galleries, showings of his work and requests for his paintings, his motivation is pure.

“I don’t let (money) influence my creation process. I don’t like to think about selling the work. I guess that’s why I have a day job as a professor,” Miller said. “I don’t try to let price or if people are going to buy it or not as the decision. I create art to create the art and not necessarily for some other kind of motivation.”