Mavis Pusey was born in Retreat, Jamaica, in 1928 and came to New York City in 1958, initially to study fashion design and later to pursue fine art. As a child, an aunt taught her to sew, and her first job was cutting fabric in a garment factory in Kingston, Jamaica.  It was an easy decision for her to study at the Traphagen School of Fashion. However, due to financial constraints, she began attending classes at the Art Students League instead, where she studied painting and printmaking with Will Barnet and Harry Sternberg, respectively, over the next four years. 

When her student visa expired, Pusey became a world nomad. She went to London, and then Paris, where her first solo exhibition was held at Galerie Louis Soulanges in 1968.  When she returned to NY, her work "Dejyqea" (oil/canvas, 72 x 60 in.) was included in the important exhibition "Contemporary Black Artists in America," held in 1971 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.  She worked with Robert Blackburn at his workshop for three years and was struck by the energy and constant movement of the city. Many of her prints from this period reflect a focused interest on the city's construction. 

Pusey also taught at various institutions throughout her career, including Rutgers University and the New School for Social Research.  She moved to Virginia later in her career.

In 2017, her work was featured in the exhibition "Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today."  It was the first U.S. presentation dedicated exclusively to the formal and historical dialogue of abstraction by women artists of color.

Since her death, she has garnered considerable attention from museums and curators. Pusey was included in the Whitney Biennial 2024 in New York, marking a high-profile reintroduction to a broad audience.  In 2025, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, opened Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images, the artist's first major museum survey (on view July 12–Dec 7, 2025), with a planned presentation at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2027. Notably, MoMA holds her 1968 screenprint Frozen Vibration, underscoring her institutional appeal. 

Selected Exhibitions

Galerie Louis Soulanges, Paris, FR (first solo), 1968

Contemporary Black Artists in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1971

Inaugural exhibition at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Washington, D.C., 2016.

Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, 2017 (traveling)

Whitney Biennial 2024, NY, Even Better Than the Real Thing

Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images, ICA Philadelphia, 2025