Dan's Cover Artist Paton Miller Talks Sebonac Inlet, Painting Layers & More

This week’s cover is, surprisingly, the first to feature the art of well-respected Southampton artist Paton Miller, best known for his palimpsest style of painting that reveal layers from his previous paintings.

He is also known as the creator and curator of the Southampton Arts Center’s annual East End Collected exhibition of works by local artists. Here, he discusses Sebonac Inlet as his go-to muse, his layered painting process and a coin-flip decision that determined the trajectory of his life and career.

A Conversation with Paton Miller

What inspired you to paint the Sebonac Inlet?

We live about a mile from Sebonac Inlet. … I’ve been in Southampton (Town) since 1974, and, except for 12 years on South Main Street when I worked in the Fairfield Porter studio, I’ve always been in Tuckahoe. … It’s such a beautiful place, and we have nostalgic ties to it. We still go clamming there; we still swim with our dogs there; And we did teach our children how to swim in the inlet.

It is a special place for me. It’s sort of like Monet’s haystacks or Cézanne’s mountains. Painting it is a go-to thing for me. If I’m in the studio and I don’t really have any ideas. I’ll say, “Oh, I’ll make another Sebonac Inlet painting.” They always come out to be quite significant. I mean, that’s a really good painting. I painted that painting probably 10 years ago. It’s in a private collection.

What did the creation process of this painting entail?

It was a different painting. I have high-speed grinders, and I sanded it down. That’s why the sky looks that way; sometimes in painting, it’s not what you brush on, but what you take off. Painting is a mixture of adding and subtracting so you get just what you want. I actually learned this from painting houses when I was a broke college student, and then I was a broke artist after college. … All these layers of paint are evidence of past decades and taste. …

Then, about 20 years ago, I was in a gallery in Florence, Italy, and my painting came back damaged. Instead of going through the insurance thing, which would’ve been long and drawn out, I just looked at the painting and realized that there were parts that were still very usable. So I cut them up, and I used them. …

(Each layered) painting is a combination of remnants from a previous painting and then my additions to make that composition come alive. … I can’t get that juxtaposition on a given Tuesday. … It’s a little bit of a time machine, like the background is from 1990, and the foreground is from 2023.

What’s your proudest art career accomplishment?

Coming here with nothing. I left Hawaii in 1974 and spent a year traveling in Asia. I had airline tickets, because my father was a pilot, that I had to use before I was 21. It was either use ’em or lose ’em. I went from Hawaii to Southeast Asia to Northern Asia to the Middle East and then to Europe and North Africa. Then I landed at JFK here with $40 and a ticket to Honolulu. I was set.

All I had to do was get on a plane, and I’d get back to my family home in Honolulu, but I had a standing invitation to visit a family friend who lived in Southampton.

Now, I’d never been to the East Coast, New York or Southampton, and it was almost like flipping a coin. … I decided to come out to visit the family friend, and she said to go visit the Southampton College, and I went. I happened to run into the head of the art department named Don Kurka. … He said, “Oh, I’d like to see those drawings you did in Asia.” So I came back the next day and showed him the drawings, which I still have; actually, I’ve never sold them.

He looked at the drawings and he said, “Whoa, these are good! Do you want to go to college here?” And I said, “Well, I’ve got $40 and a ticket to Honolulu.” And he said, “No, no, no, no. I mean, there’s a scholarship competition coming up, and I think you’d have a good chance of winning.”

I signed on for it, I won the scholarship, and all of a sudden I’m a college student in Southampton. You asked me what my greatest accomplishment was: It was finding such a perfect place for myself in the world, because I don’t think I could have made the life I made here in Honolulu.

Are you working on any new exhibitions?

I just had a show that ended at the MM Fine Art gallery at 4 North Main Street, Southampton. That was a significant exhibition, curated by Lana Jokel, of drawings, which is different for me. I just had a book come out of drawings. Lana has a copy of the book, and she said, “Let’s do a show of these drawings because they’re so topical and funny.” It was a great show for me because people were looking at a drawing and bursting out laughing. … I had a lot of exhibitions recently, and now I’m just cruising, you know? I’m enjoying this summer. It’s lovely.

To see more of Paton Miller’s work, follow him on Instagram @Paton_Miller. For updates on the East End Collected show, which usually begins in January or February and runs through spring, follow facebook.com/SouthamptonArtsCenter.