Sean Foley

Sean Foley was born in South Bend, IN. A graduate from the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, he received his BFA in 1990. He earned his MFA from The Ohio State University in 1993. Foley was Associate Professor and Chair of Painting at Maine College of Art from 1998 – 2006. From 2006 – 2012 he was Visiting Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at The Ohio State University. He currently resides in Worthington OH and Limington, ME where he works as an artist full time.

Foley has shown nationally at Anna Kustera and Mary Ryan Gallery in New York, Irvine Contemporary in Washington DC, and Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston. Museum shows include the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), DeCordova Museum, Lincoln MA, the Portland Museum of Art (ME) and the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. In 2003 he won the Juror’s Award and Purchase Prize in the Biennial Exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art (ME). He again won the purchase prize in 2009. Foley has completed residencies at Bemis, Fine Arts Work Center, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He also completed a residency at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva Island, FL. He has received awards from the Golden Foundation, the Portland Museum of Art and is a recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship.

Foley’s work is in permanent collections including, the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA, DeCordova Museum of Art, Lincoln, MA, South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, IN, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, Naples Museum of Art, FL, and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME,