Jeanne Miles was born in Baltimore, MD. In 1934 she graduated from George Washington University and attended the Phillips Gallery School in Washington, D.C. She was hired to paint a mural at the socialite Café Ramon. This mural attracted a wealthy New Yorker, who offered her a travel scholarship of a dollar a day. So, in 1937 Jeanne Miles headed for Tahiti. Living with a native family in a simple environment, she painted and explored the spiritual world of the Tahitians.

After a year spent in Tahiti, Jeanne Miles arrived in France on a cargo ship. In Paris she attended the atelier of Marcel Gromaire and also studied drawing at the Grande Chaumiere. In 1938 Miles exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. The paintings from this period are full of color and biomorphic forms in a fauvist style.

Miles returned to New York in 1941 and worked at the Guggenheim museum for Baroness Hilla Rebay, she also taught and lectured at Oberlin College in New York, and at the Museum of Non-Objective Art, among other institutions. Betty Parsons sponsored her first solo exhibition at the Wakefield Gallery and later exhibited her work at her gallery.

Miles studied with the Russian philosopher and mathematical theoreticist P. Ouspensky, 1940-1946 on his system called 'The Fourth Way'. This system, which was derived from mystical schools of Eastern thought and was believed to lead to a higher consciousness. Miles naturally moved towards the spirituality and mysticism and its symbolic forms. By the end of the 40's her work became increasingly geometrical, using purist geometric forms such as rectangles, circles in squares, mandalas and triangles.

Jeanne Miles continued exhibiting with other Abstract Expressionist artists, such as Mark Rothko and Bradley Walker Tomlin in the Betty Parsons Gallery. In 1956, by the time of her 5th and last solo exhibition, her work became strictly geometrical. In 1950 Miles started using gold and platinum leaves in her paintings and experimented with vibrant and luminescent colors to achieve stronger mystical expression and richness of her geometrical forms. Her paintings have intriguing mandala suggestions with personal spiritual content. In 1959 she exhibited at the Abstract Artist Association Annual.

In the mid-60's Miles experimented with cast polyester sculpture, working on galaxy-like, spherical objects combined with fossil vegetation. In 1968 she had an exhibition of her sculptures and paintings at the Grand Central Moderns Gallery and in 1975 was at The Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts, "Three American Purists" exhibition. Her paintings are included in various private and national collections, including The Guggenheim Museum in New York and The New York University Art Gallery.

Anita Shapolsky