Kate Cheney Chappell

A native of the Hartford area, Kate Cheney Chappell was born into the family that founded Cheney Brothers Silk Company of Manchester. Following in the footsteps of her mother, a trained artist and supporter of the visually impaired, she showed artistic talent early and was in her first exhibition at the age of fourteen. Attending Chatham College (now University) in Pittsburg, she spent 1965-66 in Paris with the Sarah Lawrence Junior Year Abroad Program. There, she studied painting, drawing, and etching at L'Atelier Goetz and poetry translation with Yves Bonnefoy. Upon returning, she married Thomas Chappell, and in 1968 the couple moved to Maine and founded Tom's of Maine, a manufacturer of natural personal-care products and a champion of environmental, social, and fiscal responsibility. After raising five children and founding an alternative school in Kennebunk, Chappell returned to college at the University of Southern Maine, graduating "summa cum laude" in 1983. Her interest in printmaking and mixed-media work was revived in the 1990s as she pursued post-graduate studies at renowned workshops and colleges. She has exhibited extensively in Maine and at other New England venues.

Chappell's first visit to Monhegan Island was in the 1980s. In 1993 she bought a cottage and built a studio there, and she returns yearly for lengthy stays. It is her spiritual and artistic home, satisfying her "deep hunger . . . for the wild, unrearranged beauty of nature"(1) and providing a supportive community for her artistic production. In keeping with the inspiration of this setting, her art is concerned with the relationship between human life and nature and with the life of the mind that allows insight into the workings of the world. Natural forms, gently abstracted, resonate in her work with carefully chosen lines from poetry, evoking both specific and amorphous images that meld seamlessly to render a comforting and life-sustaining sense of the wholeness of the universe.

S.B.

NOTES:

1. Kate Cheney Chappell, "My Relation to Monhegan," "Monhegan Commons", http://www.monhegan.com/artists/chappell/tomonhe.htm (accessed April 15, 2010).