The Silent Mouth

from an interview with portraitist Donny Miller

How does he capture the right mood in his faces? "I change their emotions -- making them look unsure, or even mean, by drawing their eyebrows a different way. The mouth doesn't really say that much. What a person is really thinking is in the eyes."

The graphic designer discusses his work Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings, an acerbic look at modern self-absorption. Like Ed Ruscha or Roy Liechtenstein, it's pop art with trenchant captions. But the quotes don't really come from the tearful faces -- they seem to emanate from some unseen essence, as in the work of Jenny Holzer. We humans think we use language to communicate, but to Miller, a silent face conveys more.