Meeting Ben Miller on the River

by Dave Corcoran

I love to meet people, and being an extrovert by nature I meet them in many different ways. In line at the checkout counter, waiting for a flight, or in the case of my wife, at a swimming pool on   hot summer day. But nothing could have prepared me for crossing paths with Ben Miller.

I should start by saying I’m a fly fisherman. I’ve been in the fly fishing business for 45 years as a Guide, an Outfitter, and a Shop Owner. You might say I have an eye for all things fly fishing. So that day, as I was on my way home from a run to the grocery store, and sitting at a traffic light waiting for green, something that I’d never seen before caught my eye. There was a guy, in a vacant field with an easel set up and a fly rod in his hand and he was casting something towards the easel. The light turned green, my ice cream was melting, I had to hurry home. As fast as possible I put things away, grabbed my camera, and headed back. As luck would have it, this guy, who I soon learned was Ben Miller, was still there and he was creating a painting with his fly rod. And not just any painting but a painting of a river, just the water. There were no trees, no boulders, no sky, and no angler standing waist deep, just the water. I thought that in 45 years I’d seen just about everything in fly fishing but this, to put it mildly, blew my mind.

At this point I wasn’t so much interested in the finished painting, that would come later, I was intrigued by how Ben got the paint onto the canvas. Ben had these little strips of fabric, single pom poms, and an octopus like thing that the day prior had perhaps been part of a mop.  And when soaked with paints he mixed from a fishing creel, and cast with zen like  accuracy, left their unique impressions onto the canvas. I should say that Ben doesn’t paint on canvas he uses a unique acrylic sheet cut to size. But for this purpose canvas sounds better.

So here was Ben casting paint as I shot photos of him in action so I could show my friends what I’d just stumbled onto. It so happens the one of my friends is the Editor of Fly Fisherman magazine and I couldn’t wait to email him the photos. I know it got his interest when the next issue of the magazine featured a piece on Ben and his unique art.

Over the next year and a half I crossed paths with Ben a number of times and each time he had another river that he was doing a painting of and his excitement was infectious . When I was invited to a gallery exhibition of his paintings here in Bozeman I immediately accepted. This was my first time seeing a number of Bens large scale paintings, perfectly exhibited side by side, with their unusual frame design, and each one completely different.  There was the Madison, the Big Hole, the Yellowstone, and several more, all rivers that I was familiar with. But something about these paintings was different and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. That is until I realized that up to this point my view of a river was from the outside usually looking down and here was Ben taking me INTO these rivers.  There was nothing to distract from the water itself which allowed each river to reveal her true personality. And the colors, spot on and mesmerizing.

When I stopped to see what this guy was doing in that vacant field years ago, I had no idea the impact it would have on me. I no longer look at rivers from the outside, I look inside like Ben taught me. I see the blend of colors that the surface texture creates, riffles with their dancing lights, rapids with their dark and mysterious personalities, slow meanders as the water catches her breath with a soft, unspoken, peace that allows us to sit and marvel at this creation.

It’s been said that beauty is everywhere, you just have to know where to look. Thank you Ben for showing me where to look.