Born in London in 1931, John Miller completed his National Service before initially beginning his professional career as an architect with the firm Milner and Craze. Upon relocating to Cornwall in 1958, Miller focused his efforts on painting full-time. Inspired by the environment surrounding his new home Miller became an accomplished landscape painter, representing the Cornish coast in stark, bold compositions. In 1961 the artist was elected as member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, and was later awarded a fellowship to the Royal Society of Arts in 1964. During the late 1960s and 1970s, Miller served as Chairman of the Newlyn Society of Artists.

In 1975 Miller participated in his first solo exhibition at the Anthony Fortescue Gallery in London, which brought his work to a much wider audience. In the following years the artist exhibited widely throughout London and Cornwall, and later exhibited across Europe and North America where his landscape paintings were very well received. Miller was an accomplished painter who explored a number of different approaches in his work. Though his subject matter largely focused on the Cornish landscape, Miller explored figurative, realist and later abstract elements in his work. His boldly minimalistic blue and white paintings of beaches are among his most enduring works. The artist died in 2002.