Jaclyn Conley

Jaclyn Conley was born in Canada in 1979 and is based in New Haven, CT. 

In her breakthrough series of paintings All The President’s Children, she references the archived photographs of First Ladies and Presidents sourced from Presidential Library collections in order to reimagine the American First Family as a symbol of the “American ideal”. Rather than creating a likeness, she uses the materiality of paint to communicate an inability to recognize these photographic images of the idyllic American life in contrast to the ever-present coverage of national conflicts and internal divisions.

Conley has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Painting Center in NY, NurtureArt in NY, Projective City in Paris, Wynick-Tuck Gallery in Toronto, and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield CT. She has been an artist in residence at the NXTHVN in New Haven, the Vermont Studio Center and The Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver Canada, and received grants including a Connecticut Office of the Arts Fellowship, a Canada Council for the Arts Visual Arts Project Grant, an Elizabeth Greenshields Award and a Fellowship from the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation. Her work has been reviewed and featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and New American Painting.

Conley is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Hartford's Hartford Art School.

SELECTED  EXHIBITIONS

2020

• Jackie& Brian& Eartha& Joan, MARUANI MERCIER Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
• Fragmented Bodies, Albertz Benda, NY

2019

• All the Presidents' Children: a solo Booth at Art Brussels, MARUANI MERCIER, Brussels, Belgium
• NXTHVN: First Year Fellows, Tilton Gallery, NY

2018

• Geoffrey Young Gallery, Idols and Icons, Great Barrington MA, curated by Phil and Sue Knoll

2016

• Art Votes: Visualizing the Democratic Process, Gallery Bergen, Paramus NJ, curated by Amy Lipton 
• Worlds Imagined, The Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield CT

2015

• Geoffrey Young Gallery, Polysolaris, Great Barrington MA, curated by Phil and Sue Knoll
• Housatonic Museum of Art, ReMythologies, Bridgeport CT, curated by Stephen Kobasa

GRANTS & AWARDS

• 2018  Canada Council for the Arts Visual Arts Project Grant
• 2016  Artist’s Resource Trust, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Artist Grant
• 2016  Canada Council for the Arts Visual Arts Project Grant
• 2012  Artists Fellowship, Connecticut Office of the Arts
• 2009  Sam and Adele Golden Foundation Fellowship
• 2003  Elizabeth Greenshields Award

COLLECTIONS

• Kistefos Collection, Norway
• Larner Family Collection, USA
• Marian Collection, Belgium
• Maruani Collection, Belgium
• Mercier Collection, Belgium
• Barrack and Michelle Obama Family Collection, USA
• Vanhaerents Collection, Belgium
• Vanthournout Collection, Belgium