By The Gorgon

Socrates was right: the unexamined life truly isn’t worth living.  Hidden among the rubble of our most mundane experiences are the epiphanies that help us understand who we are and what we should do - ‘God moments,’ so to speak, that give us a sense of our place in the universe and of the bigger picture, irrespective of any religious belief or lack thereof.  

Miles Thompson, an American artist, has had a ‘God moment.’  Maybe more than one.  And his story - living in Australia, sailing the South Pacific - make him particularly intriguing, enough that I am curious about examining his life too.

We meet at a local restaurant in West Hollywood that Miles frequents.  I’m not used to the swanky standards of the West Side, and I’m nervous.  After all, I went to graduate school on the opposite side of town - in the grimy, drug-infested, gang-riddled, homeless haven of East Los Angeles - and I loved every minute of it.  But this particular place, in the heart of West Hollywood, is a far cry from the posh scene of Sunset Boulevard.  It’s relaxed, with a nice neighborhood vibe.

A typical West Side restaurant on Sunset Blvd.

I arrived 15 minutes early and ordered a margarita on the rocks to calm the nerves.  I briefly met him a month ago covering his “Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies” show opening at La Luz De Jesus.  However, that was a quick conversation and there were a cadre of loyal fans eager to shake his hand and say hello, so I couldn’t take too much of his time then.  I take out my iPhone to play with Instagram and take a picture of my margarita.  Before I could click send, a guy with a grey t-shirt and jeans with a skateboard approaches the maître d'.  It’s Miles.  He recognizes me and approaches the table.  We shake hands and I notice that he’s wearing Chuck Taylor Converse.  I was wearing my beat up Vans that night.  All my trepidation of the West Side melts away.

A typical East Side restaurant.

Like most children, Miles drew frequently as a child.  But unlike other kids, Miles had at his disposal an in-house artist who could draw anything he wanted - his stepdad, Warren, a free-spirited architect who joined his family when Miles’s mother remarried when he was eight years old.  

The family moved to Dana Point, in Orange County, in 1979, and Miles’ mother and Warren later added two more children to the family, Kiley and Connor.  The new siblings joined Miles and his older biological brother and helped provide a welcome stability to their home life in the wake of the divorce.  They “came along and it made it really feel like a family,” Miles recalls.  

And just as his new siblings helped Miles settle in as part of a family, Warren helped Miles see his potential as an artist. “Warren made the mistake one night of leaving a drawing in my sketchbook,” Miles fondly recalls.  “It was a Word War II plane, fully rendered.”  He leans forward with excitement. “It had battle damage, a pilot, the kill count, and teeth.”  His eyes are wide open at the memory.  “Oh my God, oh my God,” he says.  “It said, ‘to Miles, love Warren.’  Suddenly Miles’ casual childhood interest in drawing became a full-fledged passion.  

The moment marked the beginning of Miles’ informal training as an artist.  After that, Miles came to Warren with all kinds of drawing requests.  “Basically, every night I would come to him with paper and source material,” Miles explains.  In a Dungeons and Dragons manual, he would point to an image and say, “See that troll?  I want you to draw the troll.”  The patient and laidback Warren would oblige, rendering the basic shape with rough circles and ovals, before going back to add the details that transformed the two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional picture.  “I would sit there and have this feeling of elation,” Miles says, smiling.  “I would laugh out loud watching him draw.”

But Miles wasn’t just discovering of the joy of drawing - he was being schooled in the process of it, too.  “I could see the logic come together through the eyes of an architect,” he says.  “Warren was my first art teacher by far,” he declares.  He reenacts his stepdad’s mannerisms.  “This is the face.  This is an X, Y, and Z axis.”  Constructing a form, Miles learned, was as much a product of thought as it was of talent.  “Whether it’s a building or a nipple,” he says, “I got to watch that build itself on paper.”

“Undersea Lament”  2004

20” x 20”

Gauche on Board

“One Armed Bandito”  2007

12” x 12”

Oil on Wood

“All Dead”  2012

6” x 6.5”

Gauche on Board

Still, despite the support of his family, his parents’ divorce remained an unforgettable and influential event in Miles’ life.  Even now, “the divorce thing is the absolute root of every story I want to tell,” Miles explains.  His paintings are very colorful and cheery, but look closer and you’ll see there’s always a hint of loss.  The characters in his work all exhibit a loss of life, love or limb.  

The family moved to Dana Point in 1979 when Orange County was literally the Wild West and oranges still grew in Orange County.  His parent’s divorce impacted him on a personal and eventually artistic level.  

In 1985, just as the summer was ending in Orange County, Miles’s mother and Warren announced that they were all moving to Australia.  They had been infected with the travel bug, and Miles explains their sudden migration was inspired by his “parents’ desire to see the world.”  At the time, Warren was one of just two architects allowed to migrate to Australia based on his occupation.  

Their move was anything but typical.  Rather than take their time acclimating to their new community, the Thompson’s arrived with adventure on the agenda.  They landed in Cairns, in the Far North Queensland Territory, and bought a boat instead of a house.  They sailed south along the eastern coast of Australia, outings that Miles recalls fondly.  “We were doing every single day trip you can figure out until we hit the Great Barrier Reef, and then eventually Sydney.”

The Thompson’s arrived at Cairs and sailed South until they hit Sidney. 

Miles surfed and swam and spent time on the beach, and all of that time on and in the water deepened his love and respect for the ocean.  “It was absolutely terrifying,” he says, shuddering at the memory of the trip from Cairns to Sydney.  “It’s a very, very humbling experience.”  They saw poisonous stingrays, sea urchin, and conus australis, a deadly cone snail native to Australia.  But the terrors of the sea were tempered by the awe and freedom that being in its presence could bring.  “It’s an incredible thing,” he says of the sense of liberation the ocean gave him.  “My time in the water definitely influenced my art in the long run.”

“La La: or the Bather”  2012

2.5” x 3.5”

Gauche on Board

The family settled in a suburb of northern Sydney in time for Miles to begin his first year of high school.  The transition was a bumpy one - he was initially taunted and called names like Uncle Sam, Commie, and Ray Gun, a play on words of ‘Reagan,’ the American president at the time.  Thankfully, the ridicule was short-lived and Miles flourished at his new school, both academically and socially.

Adjusting to Australian life was harder for his mother, who was unable to find work after nearly two years.  An active, lively self-starter, Miles’ mom was frustrated by the sexist attitude of Australian employers, who expected that an American woman should be home with her children, rather than in the workplace.  The thought of being at home with nothing to do was a maddening prospect.  

And so they left.  In 1987, the family moved back to the United States and settled in Encinitas, California.  Miles started his sophomore year at San Diego Academy, but the change is hard; in a sharp contrast to his academic success in Australia, Miles barely passes high school, floundering in a system in which he does not feel sufficiently challenged.  He graduates with a ‘D’ average, a lackluster performance, which almost costs him admission to prestigious animation department at Cal Arts.  

Related articles:

Miles Part 2:  For Every Thoreau there is an Emerson