Mark Feijão Milligan II’s story starts in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, where he was born in 1976. He grew up surrounded by Caribbean color, rhythm and memory, and that heritage still runs through every brushstroke he makes.
His talent showed early. In high school he studied under Cindy Male and tried everything: painting, drawing, graphic design, even architecture. At 16 he became an apprentice to Paul Youngblood. That year, a painting he made won the Congressional Art Competition, and it hung in the U.S. Capitol in Washington. A young artist from the Virgin Islands had taken his work to the heart of American power.
At 17 he left the island for New York City to study for a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts. His teachers there were respected painters: Don Eddy, Max Ginsburg, Marvin Mattelson and Jack Potter. New York gave him technique. The Caribbean had already given him a voice.
Over the years, Milligan has built a practice that moves between painting, large-scale murals and live performance. He came back home to present solo exhibitions at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in St. Croix, including Black Saints (2018) and Espíritu Africano (2025). Both celebrate the spiritual and cultural roots of the African diaspora. His work has also been shown at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bishop Museum, the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design and the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.
His art also reaches people well beyond galleries. He has painted murals for POW! WOW! Hawai‘i and Central Park SummerStage, took part in the “Awakening 2020” For Freedoms billboard campaign across the U.S. Virgin Islands, and has painted live for former Vice President Al Gore, Lauryn Hill and De La Soul. His work has appeared on screen in NCIS: Hawai‘i and in Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, and in print and online in ELLE.com and FLUX Hawai‘i.
Today his paintings hang in private collections that include those of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, U.S. Virgin Islands Governor Albert Bryan Jr., Congressional Delegate Stacey Plaskett, Lizzo and CBS anchor Anne-Marie Green.
Milligan now lives in Mililani, Hawai‘i, an island far from the one where he was born. His subject has stayed the same: identity, heritage and resilience across the African diaspora. Saint Art 700 is proud to share his work with collectors in the Caribbean, Miami and New York.