Galen Garwood’s work reveals the uncanniness of the ordinary world, how strange the actual can be when seen by eyes and a heart and a mind responsive to its mysteries. His is an art of extraordinary control and dexterity, yet it allows at every moment for the gifts of chance. It reads the world as if it were composed, exposed in signs, by its own calligraphy. It perceives how a stone flows or rushing water can be hard as rock. Above all, it is beautiful, as trees are most beautiful when, after rain, wind blows through them and their leaves shimmer with light. Peter Weltner
A consummate world-class artist, Galen Garwood’s paintings and photographs are meditations and explorations that attain harmonic balance and truth in motion, infused with astonishing awareness of color and perpetual energy generated by dark and light. Life within these evocative works emanates from a fleeting, ceaseless center, and their vulnerability and compassion, their fearlessness and wisdom, reside within us.
William O’Daly
Untitled oil on canvas 72″ x 94″ 1994
‘Battle’ oil on panel 34″ x 42″ 2015
the GALENOGRAPHS
“There is a grittiness and a powerful sense of pathos that makes this memoir a gripping story. I found it to be as riveting as it is psychologically deep. Romuald Dzemo, Seattle Book Review
SELL THE MONKEY, A Memoir by Galen Garwood
“…My birthday was recorded, not as the 7th, as I’d always thought and had celebrated, but the 13th. I pestered my mother one afternoon. “Why?” I demanded. I followed her around the house until she finally stopped with whatever she was doing, sat down and began to lay out the peculiar circumstances of my birth.
“We were living on Folly Beach,” she began, “and in April, I went to the doctor for a checkup. I was pregnant with you. The doctor told me he couldn’t find your heartbeat. And after further testing, he said that most likely you were stillborn, and unless he terminated the pregnancy, my life would be in danger. You had to come out and soon.”
“You mean I was dead?” I asked with befuddled concern.
“Uh-huh. That Monday afternoon I wrote a letter to Mama and told her what was happening, that I was scheduled to have the operation on Friday. It arrived in Blakely on Thursday, but…” LEARN MORE