Big Sky Country: Paintings by Ron Milewicz

Ron Milewicz’s paintings of New York invert the idea of architecture as the dominant force in the urban landscape. Ever since 1997, when he became one of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s first artists-in-residence at the World Trade Center, he has given equal weight to the sky above the city. “Somehow things jelled in that experience,” he says of his time on the 85th floor of Tower One. “Of course I can never replace that kind of view again, but I’ve continued to look for spaces or views that deal with that kind of juxtaposition of this enormous panorama and the sky.”

In the years since his WTC residency, Milewicz, who was trained as an architect, has painted in studios all over Brooklyn and Queens, moving whenever he feels he has exhausted the views through his studio windows. After nine months next to the elevated No. 7 train tracks in Long Island City, Milewicz is ready to move again. “Part of the whole thing is the game of finding the studio,” he says. “Right now I’m thinking about the airport, trying to get a space that has a terrific view of the tarmac.”