JOHN MILLER

John Miller Biography

 

 

John Miller was born in London in 1931. Following National Service and a brief spell in the theatre, films and television he studied architecture and was articled to the church architects, Milner & Craze. He went to West Cornwall in the mid-fifties to measure the screen in St Buryan Church for an exam and returned to live and paint there in 1958.

In 1961 he was elected to membership of the Newlyn Society of Artists and he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1964. He served as chairman of the Newlyn Society of Artists for a number of years during the sixties and seventies and planned the first modernisation of the Gallery in 1968. A solo exhibition in Penzance in 1974 brought his work before a wider public and he began to show in London, New York, Vancouver and across Europe.

In 1975 John Miller held his first solo exhibition in London at the Anthony Fortescue Gallery and afterwards showed regularly at The Brotherton Gallery, Walton Street. He exhibited regularly with David Messum Fine Art from 1982 to 1999 and moved to the Portland Gallery in 2000.

Aside from his exhibitions, John Miller has acquired a large following through the posters and cards of his paintings that are distributed worldwide.

John Miller's first major exhibition with Portland Gallery was held in June 2001. The exhibition was timed to coincide with the artist's seventieth birthday and with Truran's publication of Seeing is Believing, a major new book celebrating artist's life and work.

John Miller's last exhibition with Portland Gallery was in May 2005.

After a short illness, the internationally acclaimed artist John Miller died on Tuesday 23rd July 2002, at his home in Penzance.

In recent years, John Miller's simple but striking blue and white images of beaches, sky and sea have become so closely identified with him, to be recognised almost as a trademark of both his artistic style and personality. A man of deep spirituality, these paintings reflect the joy, optimism and beauty in all he saw around him.

Public and Corporate Collections Include:

Abbey Hotel, Penzance
Avon County Council
BUPA - Roding Hospital
The Burton Group
Cornwall County Council
Cunard
Discipline Global Mobile
Exeter Hospice
Groucho Club
Harlech Television
John Lewis Partnership
Law Courts, Truro
London Transport Museum and Gallery
Penlee House Gallery and Museum
Rhodes in the Square, Dolphin Square, London
Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital
Sony, Europe
St Michael's Mount
Truro Cathedral
Victoria & Albert Museum

Bibliography:

1989		Leave Tomorrow Behind, The Studio Fine Art Publications, London
1992		Sketchbook of Cornwall, Sancreed Studios, Cornwall
1993		Seaside Sketchbook, Sancreed Studios, Cornwall
2000		Another Shade of Blue, Truran, Cornwall
2001		Seeing is Believing, Truran, Cornwall