Tabitha Millett

British artist and academic Tabitha Millett has developed a unique visual language of form and materials. Her dramatic abstract work explores material moments of agency, simplicity, contrast, movement and texture, and draws influences from minimalism, brutalist design, architecture and aspects of Bauhaus; she aims for depth and intensity through ‘doing less’.

Tabitha is a perfectionist by nature, a personality trait which is reflected in the clarity, sharp lines and inherent balance of her work. Minimalist to the core, she prefers to keep her life, her possessions and her art organised and precise, and from this order emerges beauty, eloquence and an expressive rigour.

Each piece is executed in a distinctive palette of hand-mixed colours, which Tabitha blends with a range of mediums such as marble dust or limestone fragments; this gives the paint a thick texture and, in some cases, a high gloss finish. These shimmering, intense colours contrast with her signature use of a dense, matte black, which is specially formulated to absorb the maximum possible amount of light and can create the illusion of a void space.

After graduating with a degree in Fine Art, Tabitha studied for her master’s at the University of Cambridge and for her PhD at UCL. She is now a tenured Assistant Professor of Arts, Creativities, and Education at the University of Cambridge. Her work has been exhibited and sold in the UK, France and Germany. In 2016 she received the Spirit of Soho award for artwork.