After receiving an associate of arts degree in 1984 in painting and drawing, Paul Rhymer worked at the Smithsonian Institution doing taxidermy and model making for twenty-five years. He retired in 2010. Having done so much three-dimensional work in his job, in the late 1990s, he gradually began to move from painting and drawing into sculpture.

Rhymer’s work has been exhibited in Birds in Art at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin (2008-2021); the Society of Animal Artists Annual Exhibition (2007-2021); the National Sculpture Society Annual Awards Exhibition (2006, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2017); and the Brookgreen Gardens Masters Exhibition (2013). He had a solo exhibition at the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art in 2010.

His public art installations are at the Briscoe Western Art Museum; Smithsonian’s National Zoo; Denver Zoo; NatureWorks Monuments, Tulsa, Oklahoma; the City Park, Hagerstown, Maryland; Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum; Shepard Park, Summerville, South Carolina; and B.I.R.D.S. Project, Summerville, South Carolina.