Ellicott City resident Franc Miller started painting wildlife on wood decades ago, after he retired as a graphic artist. His works will be part of the upcoming Spring 2024 Art at the Mill exhibition in Virginia. Courtesy of Franc Miller

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Photo by Bryan Miller

Courtesy of Franc Miller

If you’ve ever seen the Mona Lisa in person, you may have noticed that the painting was made on wood, not canvas.

Leonardo da Vinci painted La Joconde’s mysterious smile on a panel of wood from a white poplar tree. In fact, most artists, from Raphael to Peter Bruegel, painted on wood until canvas became popular in the 18th century.

Wood is also the canvas of Ellicott City artist Franc Miller, who has been painting portraits of wildlife on it since he retired as a graphic designer decades ago.

“I felt that painting wildlife on wood was a perfect thing to do, and I would enjoy it. And I’m still doing it,” said Miller, 94, in an interview with the Beacon.

From April 20 to May 5, Miller’s wildlife on wood artworks will be displayed at an art show in Millville, Virginia, about 100 miles west of Columbia. Miller submits his work twice a year to Art at the Mill, a biannual art show located in the Burwell-Morgan Mill there.

The National Register-listed grist mill, dating from 1785, is open to the public as a museum and art gallery. It’s also a working mill, so visitors can buy flour, cornmeal and grits, all ground fresh.

Soldier to artist

Pablo Picasso once said, “All children are born artists; the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”

Art has been a central theme in Miller’s life since he was a child in Washington, D.C. His interest in art began as doodling and sketching during class. “I used to scribble things all the time,” he said.

When he reached Gonzaga College High School, the war was under way. “I’d draw what was going on in World War II,” he said. “They weren’t exactly nice things,” he admitted.

“I’d do scenes with battles between the Japanese and the Americans, and the Germans and the American soldiers. It was just scribbling. I had no art experience whatsoever.”

It wasn’t until college that he took his first art classes: drawing, painting, art history. After graduating from the University of Maryland, he joined the Army during the Korean War.

“I was going to be drafted. So I enlisted instead, and I wound up stationed in Germany for two years,” he said.

When his Army service was over, Miller returned to Washington and got a job in the Hecht Company’s art department.

Then he went on to land a job in the art department of the once-famous (but now defunct) newspaper, the Washington Evening Star. The paper won numerous Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure.

Miller moved to Baltimore next to take a position as art director of an advertising agency. When the ad agency went out of business, he opened his own company, Graphics Plus, based in Towson.

For decades, he did the advertising, design and even copywriting for small- and mid-sized business clients — a “one-man job,” as he puts it.

Fast-forward 25 years, and the design industry began to shift from pen and paper to computers.

“Everything began to change. Everything was going digital, and I decided I wasn’t going to get into that,” Miller said. “So then I retired, and I became fascinated by wood and painting on wood.”

Giving wood scraps new life

Miller started out by finding discarded pieces of wood — anything from extra floorboards to wine barrels to forest-floor scraps.

He looks for an interesting color and grain and maybe a rough, natural-looking edge. He cleans and stains the wood, and presto, he has a canvas.

“Wood is a beautiful material that quite often is buried or burned as scrap,” Miller describes in his artist’s bio, which appears beside his paintings in exhibitions.

“In recognition of its beauty, I paint wildlife on selected pieces of hard wood…It has the color, grain and texture to complement the eagles, hawks, falcons, wolves, owls, horses and other wildlife that illustrate how certain species of wood and these wild creatures go together.”

Miller turns the scrap wood into paintings in his home studio. Most of his finished works are portraits of owls, because his owl paintings sell out fast. “The ones that seem to get the most attention are the owls,” he said.

Why owls? “It’s their eyes, primarily, and the fact that they’re not active necessarily, [so can be] easy to photograph. They’re very easy to paint, in a sense.”

Miller appreciates owls, and the neighborhood owls seem to appreciate him, too. A pair returns to his back yard year after year.

“They just show up. I wish I could get a decent shot of them, but I haven’t able to do that yet,” he said with a chuckle.

Perhaps this spring Miller will be able to capture those owls on one of his wood canvases.

The Spring 2024 Art at the Mill show will take place at the Burwell-Morgan Mill, 15 Tannery Lane, Millwood, Virginia. Art at the Mill will be open seven days a week from noon to 6 p.m. starting Saturday, April 20 through Sunday, May 5.

For more information, email artatthemill@ gmail.com, visit clarkehistory.org/mill or call (540) 837-1799.

Correction: The print version of this story stated that Miller left college to join the Army. In fact, he joined the Army after his college graduation. We regret the error.