BIO


When I was nine years old, pneumonia kept me out of school for a month and my mother gave me paint-by-number kits to keep me busy. That’s how I fell in love with painting. Discovering that colors and paints create worlds was magical to me, and that has never changed. 



Born in Providence, RI, Colleen Kiely received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Kiely’s process-driven paintings focus on vulnerability, the circularity of time, and how and what we see. Colleen Kiely’s recent exhibitions at galleries and museums include solo shows at Cove Street Arts (Portland, ME), the Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA) and The Cost Annex (Boston, MA). Recent group exhibitions include Level Art Gallery (Queens, NY); VERY Gallery (Boston); Suffolk University Gallery (Boston, MA); Brattleboro Museum and Arts Center (Brattleboro, VT); The Painting Center (NY, NY); Museum of Art at the University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH); Attleboro Arts Museum (Attleboro, MA); Bowery Gallery (NY, NY); and the New Bedford Art Museum (New Bedford, MA).

Kiely’s work is represented in collections including Fidelity Corporation, The deCordova Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, The Boston Athenaeum, Wellington Management and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Awards and residencies include the Pouch Cove Foundation Residency (Newfoundland), two Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowships; Radcliffe Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University; three MacDowell Colony Fellowships; New England Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship; and School of the Museum of Fine Arts Traveling Scholar Fellowship. Kiely’s studio is in Somerville, MA and she is a Professor of Art at Simmons University in Boston.

Kiely's work can also be viewed at www.instagram.com/kielystudio.