Twister. Galen Cheney, artist
A dynamic new art show featuring the work of Galen Cheney, Off the Grid will be on display at Mark Bettis Gallery from Friday, April 7, through Tuesday, April 21. Cheney will be in attendance at the gallery’s opening reception on April 7 from 5–8 p.m. Off the Grid connects a group of paintings in the shape of a grid, giving the collection impressions of weaving and warping when seen as a whole. “It almost came as a surprise to me,” Cheney says of the grid’s appearance in her work, “as it wasn’t anything I had intended or planned in advance. But, there it was, again and again.”
Honoring what was clearly on her mind, consciously or subconsciously, Cheney began to pay closer attention to this theme. “In some of these works, the grid serves as a foundational structure for the painting that ultimately is almost completely covered over and barely visible in the finished piece,” she says. “In other paintings the grids function as windows, scaffolds, pure pattern, or they are broken apart, their pieces propelled through space by powerful forces.”
All of the paintings are done in oils, with neon spray paint in many of the pieces. “The use of spray paint keeps the painting process open and loose and gives a real chromatic and contemporary punch,” says Cheney. “Oil paint has a buttery consistency and is conducive to richly layered and painterly surfaces. I like the ways in which these different media, with their different associations, interact with each other.”
Off the Grid will be on display at the Downtown Asheville Gallery at 15 Broadway Street. Mark Bettis Gallery also has a River Arts District Gallery, its original location, at 123 Roberts Street. For more information, visit MarkBettisGallery.com or contact Mark Bettis at 941.587.9502 or markdbettis@gmail.com.
