Paul Miller was born in Saskatchewan on the Canadian prairie but spent many of his summers as a child visiting relatives on the West coast. There he found his lifelong love of boats and the ocean.
After apprenticing as a boat builder on the Fraser River in British Columbia he started his own shipyard on the north end of Vancouver Island where he built several wooden yachts.
This connection with boats and the sea continued throughout his working career and after retiring in 2004 he found himself in need of an outlet for his creative energies. Building the Friendship Sloop he had always promised himself was just one of the projects on his list.
Another was custom furniture pieces and while following that path he came upon the art of marquetry. Using a design more than 200 years old he built a "chevalet de marqueterie" which allows the cutting of veneers in the same manner used by the eighteenth century French masters.
The pieces in this gallery represent the beginning of a new stage of his life as the artist he has always kept inside emerges.