The Millerton News - March 20, 2025

The title of artist Ken Krug’s new show, “Country Roads and City Streets” says exactly what it is: a collection of small, observant paintings rooted in the two places he knows best — New York City and West Cornwall, Connecticut. The show opens April 26 at Souterrain Gallery in West Cornwall, the town where Krug and his wife Liz Van Doren spend most weekends and summers. “I realized I’d been painting a lot of roads,” he said. “In the city, you look at streets. In the country, you look at roads.” It sounds like a metaphor, and maybe it is — for duality, for motion, for Krug’s own career which spans fine art, children’s books, textile design, and teaching.

The show is comprised mostly of small paintings, many born from the prolific sketching Krug does often while waiting in his car for alternate-side parking, a time sucking practice that anyone with a vehicle in New York is intimately familiar with. “I probably fill 100 pages of sketches every couple of weeks,” said Krug, flipping through a stack of sketchbooks. “A lot of those ideas came from just sitting and drawing when I’m in the car.” Other works pull from more pastoral moments — milkweed in summer and in winter, long winding roads at dusk.