Gayleen aiken biography

Gayleen Aiken (March 25, 1934 – March 29, 2005) was an.
Gayleen Aiken was born in 1934 in Barre, Vermont.
Gayleen was also a comic book author, storyteller, historian, and a musician.

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The imaginative and caustic interiors of Gayleen Aiken in a virtual exhibition

Born in Barre, Vermont, in 1934, Gayleen Aiken lived on a large farm. An only child, she started drawing as a child. The characteristics of her childhood home deeply influenced Aiken and fueled her creation of an imaginary kingdom populated by dramatis personae that she called the Raimbilli Cousins, a family of 24 children who accompanied her on extravagant adventures.

Entirely self-taught, Aiken gradually drew attention to her lyrical images of life in a parallel Vermont. Prolific until her death in 2005, she produced over the decades a series of paintings and drawings that often combine narrative text and image, as well as cardboard cut-outs and books. “Interiors” focuses in particular on Aiken’s drawings, which depict domestic scenes teeming with youthful revelry and malice. Although Aiken herself was not known to be malicious, the artist's rebellious nature is revealed through the actions and expressions of her teenage alter egos. Never deferential, the Raimbilli cousins consistently react t

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BIOGRAPHY

Gayleen Aiken was born in 1934 in Barre, Vermont. She began her artistic career as a young child and continued throughout her life until her death in 2005. Gayleen Aiken’s work has been exhibited at Luise Ross Gallery, New York, NY; Horton Gallery, New York, NY; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Boston MA; Aqua Art Fair Miami Beach, Miami, FL; Outsider Art Fair, New York, NY; Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT; Vermont Granite Museum, Barre, VT; American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, MD. Her work is in the permanent collections of museums such as The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum of American Folk Art, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and The American Folk Art Museum.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022
Gayleen Aiken, T.W. Wood Gallery, Montpelier, VT.

2020
Gayleen Aiken: Interiors, Curated by Laurie Simmons, Fort Gansevoort, New York, NY

2016
Gayleen Aiken’s Raimbilli Cousins, The A.D. Gallery, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC.
The Curious Cousins of Vermont Outsider Artist Gayleen Aiken, Henry Sheldon Museum o

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The Curious Cousins of Vermont Outsider Artist Gayleen Aiken

The Sheldon Museum of Vermont History is pleased to present the work of self-taught, outsider/folk artist Gayleen Aiken (1934 – 2005). An only child, she began drawing a group of imaginary playmates that she named "the Raimbilli cousins" just before entering grade school. Her father operated a sporting goods and fix-it shop on the first floor of the family's large farmhouse.

By the time she was 8 or 9, she had made life-sized cutouts of 24 cousins —including "Cousin Gawleen"—using cardboard boxes from the outboard motors her father sold. She was teased and bullied by classmates, so her parents began home-schooling her in junior high. After her father died in the early 1950s, Aiken recalled, the family "got poor," the beloved old farmhouse was sold, and she and her mother moved into an apartment. Still, Aiken continued making pen and crayon drawings of the Raimbilli cousins living out adventures she dreamed of having—from dancing in the moonlight and playing pranks on parents to witnessing inanimate