Colleen Kiely

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

The subject matter of Colleen Kiely’s paintings is a world of stuffed animals, dime store figurines, and religious icons. The characters are literal misfits, pieced together from various sources just as paintings are constructed with paint, glitter, and other bits of material. Issues of vision and perception are embodied in the act of painting as each image strives to become whole.

She has exhibited her previous work in solo shows at Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art, Boston; the Lukacs Gallery at Fairfield University, Connecticut; and the Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University. She has participated in group shows at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Boston Athenaeum, the Provincetown Art Museum, the Montserrat College of Art Gallery, and Richard Anderson Fine Art, New York.

Kiely, a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art and a visiting instructor at Montserrat College of Art, has received three MacDowell Colony Fellowships, a New England Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship, and a School of the Museum of Fine Arts Traveling Alumni Fellowship. She earned her MFA in painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, and her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.