It took 20 years for the artist Mark Milroy to work up the gumption to attend the New York School of Art. At least, that’s the way the 57-year-old painter tells it, on a sunny spring morning visit to the Brooklyn shotgun apartment and studio he shares with his partner and muse, the arborist Lindsey Testolin. What Milroy leaves unsaid is that he’s been a lifelong student of art, and that his game is long. “A little bit every day can add up to a whole lot,” he says, in an accent that toggles between a Midwestern hush and Canadian idioms. His paintings are made in weeks, months, or years, and line the walls of his home.
During our visit, Milroy is putting the finishing touches on “A Colorful Universe,” an exhibition at Pamela Salisbury gallery in Hudson, New York, on view from May 17 to June 15. The show will feature 12 recent paintings; some of them started as memories, and others capture recent moments, both staged and candid. “I like vacillating between this idea of being an image maker and an image seeker,” Milroy says.
One of the pieces in the show is a new portrait of Milroy’s partner, Lindsay, staring at the viewer with a flock of ducks dive-bombing in the window behind her. Waterfowl are a recurring subject in the work, a nod to Milroy’s Canadian roots. There are other repeating forms: the chalkboards, stacked art books, rubber tree plants, taped-up magazine clippings. Many of these motifs could also function as an inventory of the objects in Milroy’s studio. I feel the slippage between the painted and the real world when I spy a pen knife depicted in several of the paintings sitting on a table’s edge nearby.
Mark Milroy: A Colorful Universe continues at Pamela Salisbury Gallery (362 1/2 Warren Street, Hudson, New York) through June 15. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
Mark Milroy, Meteor Man, 2025, oil on canvas, 44 x 56 inches