Scottish sculptor and teacher who used a wide range of materials, including bronze, steel, marble, wood, terracotta, plaster, fibreglass and concrete. Born in Banffshire, he trained at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (1948–50), and Edinburgh College of Art under Eric Schilsky (1950–53), winning a scholarship that enabled him to travel to Paris and the ceramics centre of Vallauris on the south-east coast of France. After serving in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, he returned to Scotland in 1956, spending nineteen years as a lecturer and senior lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh, where he helped to establish the Chessel Gallery at Old Playhouse Court on the Canongate. Public commissions include a three-metre-high bronze abstract sculpture in the new town square at Linwood, Renfrewshire (c.1963, now removed); three relief panels in cast reinforced concrete on the east wall of Charteris Land, a five-storey, late-1960s, Brutalist office block designed by Gordon & Dey, in Edinburgh; and the welded steel Miner and Farmer in Dalkeith, Midlothian (1976). Known to his friends as ‘Dusty’ Miller, he was also an accomplished poet, and in 1991 published an anthology of his verse, mostly written in Banffshire Doric, entitled Behind the Geranium.
Sources: McEwan, P.J.M., The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture, Ballater, Aberdeenshire, 2004.
Ray McKenzie 2018