Biography

A FAIRLY SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF L. B. MILLIGAN

My original "Old-World" relatives probably did not arrive in America on the Mayflower; but still managed to get to America starting in the early to mid 1600's. Both sides of my family line derived from the stock of farmers, traders, poets, playwrights, soldiers, sailors, preachers, and dreamers. My ancestors served in British, European, and American militaries for over 400 years. They fought in wars in Europe, the American Revolution (both sides,) and the American Civil War (both sides.) They farmed, preached, wrote things, made things, sold things, and roamed about. Among them were some remarkable people. Some were heroes, some were famous, the majority were ordinary good and decent average folks; odds say that a few were bound to be scoundrels. According to Ancestry.com® and MyHeritage.com®, my immigrant ancestors came from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany Denmark, and Wales. Apparently, my most famous relative is William Shakespeare who is my 10th generation Great Uncle. "Uncle Bill" sired no line of descendants connecting him to me. However, his sister Joan, my 10th generation Grandmother, married a Hart and their progeny married into my direct line of Milligan’s and here I am.

Whoever they were, and for whatever reasons, my ancestors risked it all and left the shores of England, Scotland, Ireland, and many parts of Europe on slow ships bound for "America." A few died at sea and never arrived with their families. My descendants landed in New England and worked their way south to North Carolina and Tennessee. From there, my family tree shows one or more of my relatives later living in almost every State.. I am an eclectic mixture of nationalities and a citizen of the USA as the result of my immigration heritage. My origins are not unique. No matter how many generations my family has lived in America, I descended from immigrants and their sons and daughters. Every American family line originated and immigrated from somewhere else to get to this country, including all indigenous Native American people who preceded Europeans by over 25,000 years. That should allow some perspective on who is an American.

I was born in Alabama on October 17, 1942 but was raised in Idaho from the age of one and a half years old. I had an older brother and younger sister. My Dad had an injury to his foot at the Aluminum foundry where he worked in Alabama and was rejected for military service during WWII. My earliest memories are of life in and around the little mining and ranching town of May in the Pahsimeroi Valley of Central Idaho. It was a time without electricity, telephones, or plumbing although I had no idea what those things were. My dad was a machinist and welder and needed steady work that tiny settlements could not provide, so we moved around quite a bit. After my sister was born in 1946, we moved to Salmon where we lived in an ancient and ramshackle log cabin on Water Street, eventually moving south to Jerome where I started and finished elementary and high school.

I started drawing on old sacks and school paper when I was 4 years old in Salmon and started painting in oils about age 13 in Jerome. I drew and painted, but throughout my early life, it never occurred to me that I would be an artist by profession. My dad was talented and encouraged me to be an artist; so naturally, I decided to go into electronics and after graduation from high school, I caught a Trailways bus aimed at the bright lights of Southern California. I lived temporarily with my older brother and his family, started college in Fullerton College that September, going to school in the evenings and working graveyard shift in Downey on Missile Guidance Systems at Autonetics (a division of North American Aviation, eventually to become Rockwell International.) I started as a Utility Man and worked my way up to become part of assembly and test.

I passed my military induction physical but I did not want to be drafted so I took some time out from civilian pursuits to join the Army. I went through Boot Camp at Fort Ord, California and spent a "restful" year on Boca Chica Key near Key West, Florida manning Hawk Missiles during the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. After surviving two hurricanes, I was rotated out of Key West and spent the next two years in Butzbach and Giessen, West Germany, and was honorably seperated from the Army as a Specialist 5. I returned to my job, got married, had a beautiful daughter, and was still working for Autonetics when an unforeseen fork in the road sort of popped up. The bottom was dropping out of the military electronics field and I was laid off. I searched for a job that fit my training and found nothing, so I started painting children's portraits for extra money, charging $40.00 each, guaranteed the likeness, and sometimes added Fido or the cat for free. The portraits were well received and affordable so I stayed fairly busy. I painted portraits at the rate of about one every few days. However, the customer pool made up of friends - and friends-of-friends - and referrals by that chain of friends was eventually depleted.

I read meters for Southern California Edison and got really tired of fighting the inevitable backyard pet Dobermans and German Shepherds; I was attacked often and was bitten twice. As luck would have it, my company called me back to work. My stint as an artist had taught me something positive for the future; I could work alone in a studio and muster the self-discipline to devote my time be an artist. I enjoyed the process. By the time I was recalled to work, we had made the decision to return to Idaho where I planned to build a log home and become a professional artist who paints scenes from the Old West. What had been a suggested but discarded idea, suddenly became a compelling desire. In thinking back, it was a wacky plan similar to jumping out of an airplane and constructing the parachute on your way down. When I decided to do this crazy thing, I lacked any formal education in either art or the art business. I had never built a house, used a chain saw, or experienced temperatures so low that ordinary rubber and plastic shattered like glass when you hit it. I had a lot of catching up to do at the edge of the Sawtooth Wilderness. I did it because I did not know it was nearly impossible. Thankfully, our dreams were not based on logic, but on desire. It's an old and mostly true maxim that says. "Ignorance is bliss."

We purchased two acres in the alpine Sawtooth Valley of Central Idaho 12 miles South of Stanley and moved onto the bare ground, making the last payment just before we moved. I had already designed a log home while still in California, even building a scale model out of dowels using road gravel for the rockwork. I drew the plans in pencil because I had to erase a lot. Driving a beat-up 1957 Chevy pickup that burned oil to the tune of a quart every 20 miles, I found and cut good dry house logs, gathered local stone for the rockwork, and poured concrete piers to support the house. The first winter came with the piers, floor joists, and fireplace foundation completed - and a sizeable stack of logs.

When a snowy winter arrived and the nighttime temperature dropped to well below zero, the work stopped on the new home until spring. Staying as caretakers for the winter at a neighbors lodge, we set up housekeeping in a tiny three-room cabin with an outhouse and a frozen water pipe to the kitchen. The thermometer dropped to minus 52 degrees in December and nighttime temperatures of minus 30 and 40 were common that winter. The only heat came from a small propane stove that never shut off until the propane tank was empty - which happened more often than I had planned. My first studio consisted of a small corner in the 8-foot-wide main room near the outside door. Anytime anyone needed to go to the outhouse, I was out of business. From that start I produced my first paintings as a professional and augmented my work in western art with a few portrait commissions I brought with me from California.

My wife waited tables in Stanley and I did odd jobs to help with my really meager income. The late Bill Todd, Jr. of Seattle, who owned and operated Shorey's Bookstore, became my first agent and fan, and he supplied me with advice, inspiration, motivation, and sales revenue. He became my main source for rare books on Western History and Native Americana and fostered a comforting lifelong friendship between a master bookseller and a greenhorn artist laden with some modest dreams and a load of ignorance about the art business.

Life is not easy for beginning artists and their families - especially those without credentials. But hard work and determination coupled with the unbounded freedom of blissful ignorance provided some fruitful results. I spent long winters painting and short summers working on our home/studio. The endless hours of peeling logs, cutting saddle notches, and lifting the heavy logs onto the walls to be fitted and spiked into place eventually paid off. After three summers of building, we moved into the 3/4 finished home just before the next winter and found it comfortable, warm - and home. That third winter, I shared my studio as our bedroom and crib site for our second daughter who was born in June. It was crowded. I finished the downstairs bedrooms the next summer. Hauling spring water in 10-gallon milk cans could not keep up with demand, so we had a well drilled as soon as we could.

We worked hard and sacrificed a lot to make it work. Hard work at the easel also started paying and we began traveling to art shows in Montana and the Northwest; thereafter, my work was selling well enough to give us energetic hope. You improve your craft by continuous effort. Within the next 5 years I was making enough to support the family on the "thick and thin" premise; but, my imagination soared. Depending on Art Shows and the success of galleries handling their work, many freelance artist’s income comes in by large chunks and the time between chunks is indeterminate and undependable. When the wolf came to the door, we ate him.

I have been very fortunate. I was 25 years old when I made the life-altering decision to forsake my job and pursue a career as a full-time artist, eventually sending work to 13 different galleries in the USA, and opening two galleries of my own. I have always wanted my work to reflect my respect for Native American peoples, the rigors and hardships of the frontier life, and the sometimes sweet, sometimes staggering beauty that can overwhelm us almost anywhere in this country. We were helped by fortunate timing, good and generous friends and neighbors, a strong desire, and the fickle finger of fate.

Larry B. Milligan

DEDICATION

This site is dedicated to my beloved Mother, Lucile Milligan. For 14 years, until the end of 2016, I acted as the principle care provider for her. She was born in January of 1914 at Bluegrass Settlements, Knox County, Tennessee, raised on a farm and graduated High School as Valedictorian. She was a kind-hearted and loving mother who was devoted to her family, worked hard all her life, and enjoyed the company of friends and family greatly. In her middle years, she worked for J.C. Penny Company and later Idaho Department Stores. She eschewed the need of aggressive competition, yet became an award winning sales person using her kindness and trustworthiness instead. She suffered from Macular Degeneration which gradually became a real hindrance to her starting in 2004. It gradually curtailed her reading, cooking, and her beloved quilting, as well as other simple little enjoyments and chores we all take for granted in our lives. Mom was forever a Tennessee girl and never lost her Tennessee accent and charm. She was an artist at quilting as well as life and one of the nicest human beings it has been the privilege of many to know.

Mom passed away peacefully on December 30th of 2016, three weeks short of her 103rd birthday. She is missed - mightily - even to this day.

Back to Home Page