Corky Carroll
Picking up where we left off last time with me telling you about Doug Miller, the artist, photographer, musician, husband, father and all-around amazing dude from Laguna Beach. We talked about his background in the Navy and about his photography last time. Let’s jump into his art.
Like with his photography skills, Doug’s painting skills were honed while in the Navy. As I did last time, I am letting Doug tell you the story in his own words from an online interview I did with him a couple of weeks ago.
“As for painting, I liked drawing as a kid. But I like to draw phone poles, electric towers, oil derricks and mountains,” he said. “Didn’t like school assignments and I couldn’t stay within the lines – drew a mural of the LA Basin in the fourth grade. Loved art in grade school, but I was just ordinary – took art at Long Beach City College. And music, a year of each.
“Aboard the Bennington, I had painted a couple small murals on the bulkhead of our compartment – cowboys and Indians and covered wagons for the fun of it. And later a much larger mural by the chief’s quarters,” he said. “They made a big impression on some of the guys. After being transferred to the Ticonderoga, CVS 14, which was coming into dry dock in Long Beach for an overhaul, I was back to just doing scullery duty and later on I was on fire watch by the Admiral’s quarters, where you sit with a fire bottle by a welder and see that he doesn’t start a fire.
“Admiral came by followed by a very ebullient woman, an interior decorator who looked at the nearby bulkhead and said, ‘A painting would look good here,’ and I chirped, ‘I paint murals!’ And she replied cheerily, ‘You do?’ almost like it was some kind of Buster Keaton movie script,” Doug said. “I explained I took art at Long Beach City College and I’d painted aboard the Bennington. “
Doug said three weeks later he was called to see the executive officer. But instead of being in trouble, “The XO said, ‘I hear you paint murals,” Doug said. “He said, ‘We’ll try you in the in the Admiral’s Passageway,’ the place where I had encountered the decorator and the admiral. And so, I bought some acrylic paint and set to painting a couple paintings in the passageway.
“I was assigned to the ‘Hab Team, part of Admiral (Elmo) Zumwalt’s idea to make the ships more habitual so that there would be more guys re-upping – staying in the service,” Doug said. “I painted murals all over that ship.”
The biggest covered “the entire four walls of the flight-ops lunch room, where the air crews eat between their shifts and remain in their work clothes,” he said. “And then Chief Wiggs had me paint his entire quarters – plus his file drawers. Altogether 57 paintings on that ship.”
Doug’s paintings are amazing. A few years ago, my wife, the Pretty Raquel, and I visited him at the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach. I had always wanted to get one of his paintings.
In his booth, he had a bin with, I am guessing, more than a thousand small paintings. Like 4-by-5, 5-by-7 and 6-by-8, small ones. The incredible thing is that they have all the same details as a huge painting, only done tiny. Whole panoramas of scenes that you would not think could be hand painted on such small canvases.
You can take photos of stuff and see it all in a small print, but to actually hand paint all that detail is mind blowing. Being on my own art mission now, it just blows my mind how he can do that.
I bought a very cool 5-by-7 of some people playing hand drums and I have it on the wall above my desk.
If you want to see some of his work check, his Facebook page or go to the Sawdust Festival. That’s the space I have for today, but stay tuned next time as I want to get into his music and all that it has meant to me over the years.
