At Home with Southampton Artist Paton Miller

“Dog--- yellow,” declared Southampton artist Paton Miller, flashing his famously mischievous grin as he described the color of the “awful” vinyl siding he tore off the 1935 farmhouse he and his wife, Nancy, bought and started renovating 13 years ago.

One would expect such colorful descriptions from a man who spends most of his day in an art studio surrounded by paint brushes and a painter’s palette smeared with raw umber, burnt sienna, cadmium red, cerulean blue and other pigments from nature’s color wheel.

Mr. Miller, a natural storyteller, enjoys waxing poetic about his dream-like paintings of animals, human figures and metaphorical objects; his austere, fresco-like canvases created by layering, scraping and scratching the paint surface; and his earthy “dirt and sky” color palette.

But when it comes to describing the colors chosen for the interior walls of his cozy three bedroom, two bath farmhouse, Mr. Miller is surprisingly matter-of-fact.

The living room color? “Green.” The color of the master bedroom? “Light Blue.” And the color of his son Christian’s bedroom? “Red and Blue.”

Sensing a reporter’s need for more specificity when asked about the color of the newly renovated kitchen, he summoned “Mustard Yellow” out of his fertile imagination.

“The truth is, I could never be one of those people who work at Benjamin Moore and come up with colors like Ladies of the Lake Blue,” he admitted. “If it were up to me, I’d leave all the walls white like a blank canvas.”

It was Nancy, a talented potter and artist in her own right, who took it upon herself to give the house’s rooms their splashes of color.

“I waited until he was away on a trip, then went to the hardware store and bought some cans of paint,” laughed Ms. Miller, who fell in love with the artist in 1987.

Mr. Miller, whose early days were filled with wanderlust and adventures, said he “never really thought about the security of owning a home until we had children.”

Born in Seattle and raised in Hawaii, Mr. Miller preferred tackling Oahu’s waves to tackling homework. After studying at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, he spent a year backpacking around Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

It was through a friend of the family—the late fashion designer Ellen Offutt—that Mr. Miller made his way to New York via Southampton in the mid-1970s, where he landed an art scholarship to Southampton College and started showing his paintings at New York art galleries. Today his work is shown locally at the Pamela Williams Gallery in Amagansett and his collectors include Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Dewey Watson, the co-discover of DNA. Mr. Miller’s next exhibition opens on January 26 at Piano Nobile, a gallery/design studio in Seattle.

“I didn’t know a soul when I arrived in Southampton,” he noted.

That quickly changed when the charismatic artist befriended Dr. Mary Johnson, who let him rent a cottage on her South Main Street property for only $250 a month. Dr. Johnson’s sister was the well-known artist Jane Doscher, and her next-door neighbor was Anne Porter, widow of the iconic American painter Fairfield Porter.

“I fell into this wonderful group like a pig in mud. I saw that Fairfield Porter’s studio was empty, so I knocked on Anne’s door and asked if I could paint there,” said Mr. Miller, who was embraced by the Porter clan and spent the next 23 years working from the studio.

In 1990, the Millers moved to Molokai, Hawaii, where the artist taught at the Kaulapapa (Leper) Colony and Ms. Miller taught elementary school. When their son, Sam, was born a year later, they returned to Southampton. With “only 40 dollars in their pocket,” Mr. Miller worked as a contractor and re-established himself on the New York art scene.

“We fell in love with this house,” he explained of their search for a place to put down roots. “We liked that it had 3 acres, good bones and had survived the Hurricane of 1938.”

Over the years, the Millers have made some upgrades to house. In addition to replacing the vinyl siding, they refinished all the yellow pine floors (which their new “pound dog” Henry is scratching up); and converted the attic space into a third bedroom.

As for their eclectic decorating style, the couple jokingly calls it “Hobo Gap” and “Early Salvation Army.”

“When I was a contractor, I got a lot of great hand-me-downs from a rich woman who changed her furniture every six months,” he said proudly.

Last year’s kitchen renovation included installing a new bay window over the sink and refinishing the 1960s-era wood cabinets. Friends Chris Kiegel and artist Jeff Muhs installed cement countertops embedded with seashells.

The kitchen is where Nancy—an “amazing cook” according to her husband—struts her culinary stuff, and where the couple plays “killer” games of Scrabble.

“Like any house, we’ve filled our home with artifacts from our life,” Mr. Miller noted, moving into the living room.

Displayed in the built-in corner cabinet, for example, is a collection of decorative ice fishing lures made by friend and renowned carver Aage Bjerring.

Holding up one that “has its guts hanging out,” Ms. Miller laughed and said, “This is the kind of thing my husband buys me as an ‘I love you’ gift.”

Other treasures in the room include a wood sculpture made by a friend in Molokai; a pre-Columbian bowl unearthed in Mexico; and a Lladro figurine from Mr. Miller’s childhood which inspired his first artistic drawing.

“This is a photo of my father and grandfather with a 237-pound blue marlin they caught in Acapulco in January 1947,” he said, noting that his father was a pilot and mercenary who, during World War II, was hand-picked by Gen. Chiang Kai-shek to fly cargo planes over ‘The Hump,’ the dangerous Himalayan air route from India to China.

Another photograph depicts when Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon, the first pilots to fly non-stop across the Pacific Ocean, crash-landed near Mr. Miller’s grandfather’s farm in Washington in October 1931.

“The propeller is now in the Smithsonian, but for a while it sat on my grandmother’s couch,” he said.

The small, adjoining television room showcases another of Mr. Miller’s favorite possessions—a watercolor by Jane Doscher that he coveted for more than 30 years and purchased after her death. Also hanging on the wall is a colorful painting by Ms. Miller and an artist’s proof of a Fairfield Porter lithograph which they bought for $100 and is worth about $5,000.

The glass-enclosed sunporch has an old-fashioned sky blue ceiling and white walls.

Upstairs are the family’s bedrooms. While their son’s rooms are “typical boys’ rooms,” the master bedroom is the location of the “family wrestling mat.” Instead of a fussy, formal bed, the couple placed two foam queen-size mattresses side-by-side on the floor for family wrestling matches. Over the bed hangs a 1880s “crazy quilt,” which Mr. Miller picked up for $25 at local shop.

On top of the large armoire, which once belonged to Jane Doscher, is a Hummel porcelain figurine from Mr. Miller’s childhood, and a Ghurka knife his father brought back from World War II. Thumb-tacked over the room’s large picture window, which overlooks the backyard and Mr. Miller’s art studio, is a picture of Oahu, a nod to the artist’s youthful surfing days in Hawaii.

Moving outside, Mr. Miller said he is proud of the recent improvements made by tree expert Scott Chronis to their 3 acres of property.

“I can see how some people make trees their hobby,” he said, surveying the cedar, wild cherry, pear and other trees gracing the space.

Also on the property is a skeleton of a teepee—made from linden wood—where Duffy, the family’s beloved Lab, is now buried. A frozen pond (“the skating rink”) is nearby, as is Ms. Miller’s 400-square-foot vegetable garden.

Mr. Miller’s studio is like the rest of the house—functional and relaxed. “I either need more space or less stuff,” he joked, looking around at the crowded space filled with hundreds of his paintings; drawing props that include wooden rabbits, horses and figures from Bali (where the family spent the last two summers); family photographs; and bookshelves filled with art books.

Now 55, Mr. Miller he feels like he’s found his happily-ever-after “Mayberry RFD” existence in this Southampton farmhouse. “I’ve always been the kind of guy who thinks about where I’m going to travel next. Now I enjoy just being home with my family.”