Sculptural Layering

Quilt-by-galen-cheney
COLLAGE ARTIST

Galen Cheney’s Collage-Paintings

Galen Cheney is always pushing her abstract painting into new areas of exploration. Lately she has taken up shredding her older paintings and assembling the pieces onto blank canvas. She might also use translucent paper dress patterns by pressing them into those cut-up pieces and adhering them with acrylic gel medium. Over the top of all that she paints with oils and ink, and then presses more patterns into the wet paint. The result is a cacophony of collaged colour and pattern; swirling with energy, dense in layers, with optical illusions of calligraphic letters that resemble Chinese ink writing. In Kolaj #16, Dian Parker profiles this artist.

This article appeared in Kolaj #16. To read the entire article, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.

China-9-by-galen-cheney

Collaging like this is a rich, call and response process. I really love this way of working; there is so much freedom. When I am painting with oils, there is a dance that I do that involves impulse and analysis, speed and slowness, gut and head, in a back and forth rhythm. With collage, the analytical part happens in making the final compositional decisions, though even then it isn’t necessarily final, as rich things can happen when I pull off adhered paper.

This article appeared in Kolaj #16. To read the entire article, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.

Early-Lotus-by-galen-cheney

Born in Los Angeles, Galen Cheney lives and paints in Middlesex, Vermont. She has a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, and a MFA from The Maryland Institute, College of Art. She has received multiple fellowships: The Millay Colony, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Vermont Studio Center, and Da Wang Culture Highland in Shenzhen, China. Her work has been shown and collected throughout the United States and Canada.