Millie

Bartlett

Millie Bartlett is known for her unique collage style, using muted greens, reds, and beiges sourced from vintage magazines. She often incorporates elements of vintage cars, combining them with solid blocks of color to create scenes of aspirational nostalgia, a playful longing for simpler times.

Millie was a creative child and witnessed the joys of a creative life up close by watching her mother paint. At 10 years of age, Millie began writing and illustrating her own stories, using magazine cuttings, so her collage journey began early. This solidified a quiet wonder that art was, indeed, everywhere.

After various milestones and misadventures, which includes dropping out of art school, Millie returned to collage in 2013. She found it delivered unparalleled levels of dopamine not found in any of her other creative endeavours. She is quoted as saying, “When I am collaging I can actually feel my synapses firing.” And it is in this way that Millie finds collage an essential part of her life.

In 2018 Millie began using Saturday Evening Post magazines from the late 30s to early 60s as her exclusive source material. Since it’s now a finite resource, Millie uses every part of the magazine - including the blank spaces and borders - to create her collages. She enjoys how the magazine illustrates the evolution in 40s and 50s America via the political and pop culture of the time. It’s not wasted on her how those same influences and values ripple, retroactively, throughout the world even still.

Through collage, Millie meditates on the ironies of remembering; the volume of loss and sadness that punctuate our lives, whilst holding fast to beauty and the bittersweet.

Courtesy of Millie Bartlett

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Millie Bartlett was born in 1977 in Nambour, Australia. She is currently based in Sydney, Australia.