About Mark McKinney

Mark McKinney was born in Minneapolis, and his first memory of being intrigued by art was on a visit to the Walker Art Center with his mother. Mark was in elementary school at the time, and as he stood in front of Chuck Close's "Big Self-Portrait,", he couldn't believe this photo-like image was a painting. He remembers staring at it for a long time, trying to figure out how something like this could have been painted.

Jump ahead 10-12 years, and after graduating from Drew University with a degree in art history, Mark's first job was working at Pace/MacGill Gallery, where he had an opportunity to meet Chuck Close and visit his studio several times through his job. He was never in a position to tell Chuck of this painting's effect on sparking his interest in art, but it makes for a good story in having it all come full circle.

Mark worked at Pace MacGill for 5 years, and then went on to work for Pace Editions for the following 5 years. It was during this time that Mark moved to a one bedroom apartment on Stanton Street on the Lower East Side, and as he was moving in, he realized his bed would not fit in the small bedroom! While initially frustrating, it sparked an idea: if he couldn't have his bed in the bedroom, maybe he'd have an art gallery in there instead! The seeds were planted for Tredomus, a view-by-appointment art gallery which staged several trial-run exhibitions and events, followed by a season of five formal exhibitions. One little-known secret to be revealed years later: since it was his apartment in addition to being a gallery, it wasn't always easy to keep everything gallery-level clean all the time ... and so when last-minute appointments were made by clients to come view art work, the easy answer to clean up was this: grab everything laying around, place it in the bathtub, and pull the curtain closed.