Phoebe-Agnès Mills

Phoebe-Agnès, an oil painter raised in the Tennessee mountains by a poet and a French professor, merges historical techniques with contemporary imagery. Trained in an atelier-style apprenticeship before earning her BFA in Art and Philosophy, she draws from childhood memories of rippling creek waters and medieval French châteaus. Beyond painting, she has trained in a pre-professional ballet company, lived in a monastery, and enjoys bakes pies.

Research Detail

As a child, I saw magic in light—how it rippled across water, filtered through trees, or dissolved into clouds. Wonder was effortless.

In today’s world of instability, mass-production, and desensitization, that feeling of wonder is hard to reach. Yet, personal and cultural grief challenged me to seek moments that transcend the ordinary, whether through divine presence, chance, or fleeting beauty.

I paint from personal photographs, seeking moments that transcend their immediate context—moments of domestic intimacy, fleeting connections, and people interacting with nature. Through light and water, I explore transformation, ephemerality, and the numinous. My practice draws from Genre scenes, Romantic spirituality, and Baroque drama, elevating the mundane by imbuing it with emotional and spiritual weight. The physicality of painting becomes a dance between holding and releasing, balancing representation with abstraction. Swirling marks of joy and melancholy evoke time, memory, and the unseen, offering a contemplative alternative to today’s proliferation of images. In a world of passive consumption, my work resists disposability and offers a space for contemplation—an invitation to see, to feel, to believe in something beyond the surface.