Abby Cheney

Abby Cheney

Baltimore, MD

Kenyon Class of ’14, Studio Art major

To be adrift in a thought or feeling is to float aimlessly, to be unanchored, uncontrolled, and unstable. I love this feeling, but am also terrified by it.

Succumbing to this feeling forces us to be under the influence and at the will of our memory and emotions. To explore the reaches of feeling and thought is uncomfortable, but still I return to it again and again. The state of physical and mental submersion, when all dissolves into a sensation or memory, and how this experience can never be contained is beautiful to me.

These pieces are a study of my relationship with memory that is brought on by encounters with immersive environments. My paintings take on an organic form of surroundings that are both comfortable and uncomfortable to me. The abstracted color, design, and space of my work transform into a personal expression of how the process has taken me through the layers of each hour I work. To get from the start to the end of each piece, I go through a range of feelings, thoughts, and memories that ultimately become integrated into the paintings. Each mark is emotive and an attempt to capture the ineffable feeling of immersion. I invite the viewer to explore where they connect with my mark in each of the pieces, and to follow where it takes them in their own personal pattern of thought, feeling, and memory.

– Abby Cheney, ‘14