More about Galen Cheney

Education

Maryland Institute, College of Art, M.F.A. in Painting, 1990

Mt. Holyoke College, B.A. in Studio Art and Italian, 1984

Bio

Vermont artist, Galen Cheney, majored in Italian and Studio Art, but it wasn't until a few years out of college and deep into the wrong career that she made the commitment to pursue art as her vocation. She received a Masters of Fine Art degree in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and has since exhibited her contemporary abstracts around the world.

Galen’s oil paintings typically begin with the seed of an idea drawn from the other pieces she is working on. She paints several pieces simultaneously, allowing them to feed each other as discoveries are made, but always ensuring each painting has its own process for becoming.

To build the paintings, Galen doesn’t follow a blueprint, preferring instead to rely on her eyes, her guts, and her faith. She raises the paintings and then knocks them down, over and over again. She will make a set of deliberate marks that could constitute a painting, then wipe through them, blurring and changing them in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways. This cycle is repeated until eventually she takes control of the painting, fine tuning it until it says what she needs it to say, while always allowing those wonderful accidents of paint to show through.

In Our Words

Energetic and expressive, Galen Cheney’s abstract paintings reflect a sort of ordered chaos. Various colors and shapes coalesce into unified compositions, yet there is an explosive and unpredictable quality about them. It is this complexity that makes her paintings so compelling; they implore the viewer to do more than just look.

Selected Exhibition History

• Sketchbook Project Various museums and galleries, Touring museums and galleries in Brooklyn, Boston, Atlanta, Washington DC, Chicago, St. Louis, and Philadelphia 2009
• Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Hanover, New Hampshire 2009
• Internal Combustion Potter Gallery, Taft School, Watertown, CT 2008
• Internal Combustion West Branch Gallery, Stowe, Vermont 2008
• Night of 1,000 Drawings Artist's Space, New York, NY 2008
• Valdosta National Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia 2007
• The Wave Galerie 1225, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 2005

Selected Sales History

• After the Wave – Oil On Canvas – 48'' h x 34'' w – $3,900 – February, 2005
• Sanctuary No. 4 – Oil and Mixed Media On Ca – 40'' h x 30'' w – $3,400 – May, 2006
• Unknown Poem – Oil On Canvas – 44'' h x 33'' w – $4,200 – May, 2007
• Bathsheba – Oil On Canvas – 43'' h x 33'' w – $3,800 – May, 2007
• Ghost Morning – Oil On Canvas – 44'' h x 33'' w – $4,200 – June, 2007
• Last Painting in May – Oil On Canvas – 43'' h x 33'' w – $3,800 – December, 2007
• Asleep Among Rubies – Oil On Canvas – 44'' h x 34'' w – $3,800 – August, 2008