Ruarí Milne

Born in Canada

Lives and works in London, UK

Ruarí Milne is a Canadian painter currently based in London. She is currently completing her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, and received her BA in Art History from the University of Toronto in 2024. Her painting begins with the warmth, tactility and grittiness of oil, and with listening to the expansive space of colour like a best friend. “It is about painting with my hands and resisting mediation, detachment and disembodiment in the process. I wash oil across the canvas, scratch through it and pull out light from underlying layers. I wash over it again, rub it out, run through it with thick paint and let its stiff peaks curl into branch-like forms. To paint is to be physically present with material, with the surface, the tenderness and awkwardness of it all, and to listen to the environment it creates.” The process is as much informed by Gutai, lyrical abstraction and Turner as it is by a cramped room of London jazz musicians moving to an expansive sax solo. 

EDUCATION

2026 MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London, UK

2025 Graduate Diploma in Fine Art, Royal College of Art, London, UK

2024 BA with High Distinction in Art History (minors in Diaspora Studies and Spanish), University of Toronto

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2026 'London Writes Itself,' LBF Contemporary, London, UK (Group)

2026 'Intersections,' Annex by the Koppel Project, London, UK, curated by Fernando Carri (Group)

2026 'Shine Light,' Indra Gallery, London, UK, curated by the Table and Gallery (Group)

2026 'Salon 0502,' The Old Waiting Room at Peckham Rye Station, London, UK, curated by September Curatorial (Group)

2025 'Preludes,' hARTslane Gallery, London, UK (Group)

2023 'Tonic,' Nuit Blanche Toronto, 401 Richmond, Toronto, Canada (Group)