Jay Miriam

Jay Miriam (b. 1990, New York City) is a Brooklyn-based painter known for her large-scale oil paintings that explore the quiet poetry of everyday life. Her work focuses on the seemingly small, ordinary moments that make up our daily routines, revealing the emotional depth and subtle strangeness that can exist within them.

Miriam received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012 and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2019. Her contemplative practice relies heavily on memory rather than direct observation. She does not use photography, computers, or projection in her process; instead, she reconstructs scenes from recollection, imagination, and narrative. Each painting becomes a poetic reinterpretation of a particular emotion, relationship, or moment in time.

Working with bold mark-making and loose, expressive brushwork, Miriam often depicts nude feminine figures engaged in familiar, everyday activities—brushing teeth, making small talk, waiting for someone at a bar. Her subjects inhabit intimate spaces where time seems to linger, creating compositions that blur the line between the uncanny and the ordinary. Through this approach, Miriam invites viewers to reconsider the overlooked rituals and quiet pauses of daily life.

The artist’s paintings frequently take months—and sometimes up to a year—to complete, reflecting the careful layering of memory, narrative, and painterly experimentation that defines her practice.

Miriam has exhibited widely across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific, and her work has been presented at major art fairs including Art Basel Miami Beach, the Dallas Art Fair, and the Amsterdam Art Fair.

Her solo exhibitions include Fantasies in a Waking State, Ornis A. Gallery, Amsterdam (2017); Catch the Heavenly Bodies, Half Gallery, New York (2016); Blue Paintings of Women, Ornis A. Gallery, Amsterdam (2014); Youth and Beauty Parade, Ornis A. Gallery, Amsterdam (2013); and JM, Cudowne Lata, Krakow (2011).

Recent group exhibitions include Zwang, C.G. Boerner Gallery, New York (2020); MESSHALL, New Release Gallery, New York (2019); Rednessness, Cooper House Gallery, Dublin (2018); Bicoastal, Meyer Vogl Gallery, Charleston (2017); New York Nowhere, Olsen Gruin Gallery, Sydney (2017); Beyond the Gaze: Women Painting Women, Garis & Hahn, New York (2016); and Mute, Galerie COA, Montréal (2015).

Miriam lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.