Aleah Chapin

Aleah Chapin (born March 11, 1986) is an American painter whose direct portrayals of the human form have expanded the conversation around western culture’s representations of the body in art. Described by Eric Fischl as “the best and most disturbing painter of flesh alive today,”^[1] Chapin’s work has explored aging, gender and beauty, influenced in part by the community within which she was raised on an island in the Pacific Northwest. More recently, Chapin's work has taken a radically inward shift, expanding her visual language in order to better express the turbulent times we are living in. Consistent throughout her career, Chapin’s work asks the question: What does it mean to exist within a body today?

Chapin holds a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She has attended residencies at the Leipzig International Art Program (Germany) and MacDowell (United States). Chapin has exhibited both nationally and internationally at places such as Flowers Gallery (New York, London, Hong Kong), The Belvedere Museum (Austria), and the National Portrait Gallery (London). She has been a recipient of the Promising Young Painters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (New York), the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (Canada), a Postgraduate Fellowship from the New York Academy of Art, and won the 2012 BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery (London).^[2] Her work has been published extensively in print and online, and she is a subject in the BBC documentary titled “Portrait of an Artist”. Aleah Chapin lives and works in Seattle, WA.