{"id":18805,"date":"2023-05-22T11:43:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T15:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/?page_id=18805"},"modified":"2025-09-02T12:38:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T16:38:54","slug":"sam-mcmillan-the-dot-man-biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/exhibitions\/sam-mcmillan-the-dot-man-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam McMillan (The Dot Man) Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-black-color has-text-color\">Sam &#8220;The Dot Man&#8221; McMillan (American, 1926-2018)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up in depression-era North Carolina, McMillan did a variety of jobs throughout his life as farmer, bartender, furniture maker, and handyman. When he began making art in his 60s after an employer asked him to paint bed frames, he didn\u2019t stop. By the time of his death, McMillan had amassed an enormous body of work that covered walls, doors, cabinets, flower pots, cars, and clothes. \u201cDot Man\u201d became his trademark because of the way he used brightly colored and misshapen polka dots to bring alive his compositions.<br>Using primary colors, McMillan painted black and white families holding hands along with scenes from everyday life, like riding bikes or flying kites, alongside his motto: &#8220;If we all hold hands, we can&#8217;t fight.&#8221; This spoke to using our connection as humans in this world to make peace and unite against bigoted hate and violence. A memorial exhibition of his art was held by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, and now many collections throughout the US have obtained his work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"739\" data-id=\"17642\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/03\/2019.4.32-900x739.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-17642\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/03\/2019.4.32-900x739.webp 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/03\/2019.4.32-365x300.webp 365w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/03\/2019.4.32-768x631.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/03\/2019.4.32-1536x1261.webp 1536w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/03\/2019.4.32-765x628.jpg 765w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2023\/03\/2019.4.32.webp 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Sam McMillan \u201cThe Dot Man\u201d, World Peace and Harmony, n.d., oil on wood, 18 x 22 in., Bates College Museum of Art, Gift of Jane Costello Wellehan, 2019.4.32<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" data-id=\"14895\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2021\/01\/blank-image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14895\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" data-id=\"14895\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/files\/2021\/01\/blank-image-2.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14895\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sam &#8220;The Dot Man&#8221; McMillan (American, 1926-2018) Growing up in depression-era North&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1626,"featured_media":0,"parent":1152,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-18805","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1626"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18805"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21590,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18805\/revisions\/21590"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}