Peter Milton was born in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania on April 2 1930 and in 1938 his family moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. After studying at the Virginia Military Institute, Milton began his formal art education at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, under Joseph Albers, from 1950-1954 (B.F.A.) and his M.F.A. in 1961. In 1960 Milton began to get interested in printmaking and created his first lift-ground etching that year. In 1962 he discovered he was partially color blind and began seriously persuing engraving and etching.

He began exhibiting both solo and in groups in 1963, his first show was at the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA and has since shown extensively, with representation in well over 100 public collections. In 1969 he moved to rural Francestown, New Hampshire, having given up teaching for a year. A converted barn hayloft became a studio and he began working on the "Jolly Corner Suite" and experimenting with uv sensitive resists began. The suite was published in 1971 by Aquarius Press. He received the first prize at IX Festival de Artes Graficas, Cali, Colombia, and was invited as a juror to X Festival, and given first one-man show outside of United States.

Milton has had exhibitions in London, Paris, Osaka and Seoul, as well as in most major cities in the U.S. He has served as a visiting artist at Dartmouth, Yale, Columbia and Rhode Island School of Design. He has been busy since, experimenting with, as he calls it "a desperate dive head first into the microcosm of the pixel", completing "Finished Sight Lines 1: Tracking Shot," mhis first digital image, printed in both digital and intaglio versions with a third on transparent film to be displayed in a LED lightbox.