Lindsey Millikan

Lindsey Millikan is a contemporary realist painter and muralist whose work over the past ten years has focused on environmental stewardship and community engagement. She has murals everywhere from main highway throughways in Oakland to a mural atop the Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Conference. She recently relocated her home and painting studio to Austin, TX while still maintaining connection in the Bay Area.

Her largest mural to date is a 4000 sq ft public work in West Oakland that transformed essential commuter corriders suffering from extreme blight into beacons of light telling the stories the the community youth. This mural was part of a 16,000 sq ft mural series and multi-year project that Lindsey has been fiercely dedicated to that involved immense collaboration between Oakland Unified School District, City of Oakland, Caltrans, West Oakland non-profit AHC and a community of passionate muralists. Building180, an innovative art production and management company, has commissioned her for over a dozen mural, sculpture and installation commissions throughout the Bay Area. She has painted multiple large-scale permanent and temporary murals for Paint the Void in the midst of the pandemic to highlight and honor local businesses in San Francisco. In 2020, she also assisted Gay Outlaw in a permanent sculpture installation at San Francisco International Airport that weighs just shy of 2500 pounds. She has collaborated with legendary artist, Prairie Prince, on a number of large-scale set design projects and that are created on-site and in their shared SF studio for over a decade. In her interior mural projects, she is known for her technical exactitude and detailed project management. In her exterior mural projects she is known for vibrant color, impactful design and bold painterly brushwork. Her next large-scale work is slated for early 2022 in Austin, TX in partnership with the City of Austin.

“Mural work has also inspired me to expand my use of materials in the studio. Over the years I have have brought acrylic, latex and aerosol into my world of classical training with oil. This expansion of skill set from materials to tackling of diverse subject matter has set me up for my next series, which will be my most ambitious yet. I am interested in exploring the cosmos as a voyage to individual self-discovery. These mixed media paintings insert a solitary figure in an expansive spaces where water meets sky. A figure we could all see as representation as ourselves and pushes us to take leaps forward into the unknown during these unprecedented times. Inspired by the concept that we are all made from stellar ash, these figures are diving headfirst, backflipping or doing a cannonball into a star scape that merges with water interspersed with clouds. This exploration of intentional forward thinking could inspire mindful dialogue across a diverse audience whether viewed as smaller prints, larger gallery works and ideally large-scale murals. Ultimately, my goal is to foster an artist practice that allows me to create visual touchstones that reckons with the past, reflects the present and inspires the future.”-Lindsey Millikan,2021