Galen Cheney is a painter’s painter. Her education as a painter began at Mount Holyoke College and continued at the Maryland Institute, College of Art where she received her MFA and was mentored by Grace Hartigan and Salvatore Scarpitta, among others. She was born in Los Angeles and has traveled widely though has spent most of her life in New England where she feels a deep connection to her roots, the land, and centuries-old architecture.
Cheney’s work has been exhibited and collected in the U.S., Canada, China, the U.K. and Europe. Past residencies and fellowships include the Millay Colony, MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, and Da Wang Culture Highland in Shenzhen, China. Her work has been published in literary journals and magazines including New American Paintings and Art New England, and was nominated for a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant in painting. Her work is represented by David Richard Gallery in New York City. She lives and works in North Adams, Massachusetts.
The creative process and the exploration and manipulation of materials are the chief drivers of my work. They are the engine and the fuel. Experimentation, risk taking and pushing my own boundaries are ongoing concerns, always with an eye toward gritty beauty and a palpable energy. This energy alternately recalls natural forces or more urban frequencies.
The work I am currently making is a furthering, a deepening of work that I started during a residency in China in 2015. I use fragments of past paintings, old receipts, used airline tickets, remnants of past experiences and work them into the texture of the new painting. Using a process that is additive and reductive, these fragments become one with the surface, imbuing the painting with memory, history, a sense of time, and an accidental quality, similar to graffiti, which I am drawn to. Paintings made this way—built, really—have a distinct, object-like quality, which I strive for.
