Chris Foley was born in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1951. He attended Georgetown University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and sculpture. He has also attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Visual Information Technology graduate program at George Mason University. In 1997, he co-founded Old Town Editions in Alexandria, Virginia, with Mark McCormick-Goodhart, a photographic scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. The company has numbered among its clients The Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, The Museum of American History, National Park Service, World Bank, and many others over the years. Foley moved to the Asheville, North Carolina area in 2004. For the past 18 years, he has been the owner and director of The Haen Gallery in Asheville as well as a second gallery location in Brevard, North Carolina, that opened five years ago. Foley’s work has been shown at eklektikos gallery and The Alla Rogers Gallery at 1054 Canal Square in Georgetown; at Govinda Gallery at 1227 34th St.; The International Symposium of Works on Paper in Kyiv, Ukraine; Michihito Ohtagaki Gallery in Tokyo, Japan; the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia; Georgetown University Art Department’s 25th Anniversary Show; Reston Art Center in Reston, Virginia; The George Mason University Visual Information Technologies Program Show; and The Troyer Gallery in Washington; as well as the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. Foley’s work is available at The Haen Gallery in Asheville and Brevard, North Carolina."

STATEMENT

I’ve been working on this imagery for over 20 years now. My aim is to capture the light, energy, and forms that are present in the moving waters of rivers, creeks, and streams. My pursuit has led me to West Virginia, Labrador, Ireland, New Zealand, the Bahamas, and Patagonia, but I’ve discovered the essence of what I was looking for right in my own back yard — around the Davidson River in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina — 10 minutes from my home!

I am interested in presenting these images in the context of painting. For me, the river is creating millions of paintings every day and I want to try and apprehend this flow of imagery in a form that we commonly understand as art. And I want to share with the viewer the sense of connectedness that I feel when I’m in and around these places.