Bridget Seley Galway artist/poet- Born in Marathon, Florida, in 1954, Galway’s roots come from the 50s and 60s bohemian life style of Key West, New York’s Greenwich Village and Provincetown.
She was awarded a full merit scholarship from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She moved from Provincetown with her one-and-a-half-year-old son Blake, to pursue her formal training in the arts. While there she received a Fine Arts Achievement Award, and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1989, with a BFA in Painting and Art Education, combined with a focused Minor in Art History.
Bridget’s professional career after college began with her co-founding with the community, and directing El Arco Iris Youth and Community Arts Center in Holyoke, MA. The Center was a free safe haven for at-risk youth and their families battling the effects of poverty and crime, in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city. Bridget established collaborations with the surrounding colleges, arts entities and the community. The collaborations, along with her fundraising and grant writing efforts, provided ongoing workshops in a variety of visual and performing arts. The Center’s philosophy: “The creative process is an inherently ‘I’ saying process, a tool for self- empowerment. It not only expands an awareness of beauty, but a sense of pride in ones cultural identity, one’s self, and this simultaneously transcends to a heighten awareness and respect for individual, cultural, and ethnic diversity.”
In 1994, Bridget returned to the Cape with her son to continue her work with Youth and the Arts. She did several art projects in the schools; co wrote a grant, which funded a new initiative called The Rainbow Network, which focused on celebrating diversity through cultural events.
In 2015, she established Youth Arts Arise, a free afterschool arts program at Arts at the Armory in Somerville, MA. She has since retired and is focusing her time on her art and poetry.
Galway’s art has been exhibited throughout New England in numerous solo and group juried exhibits. Her art has received recognition and reviews in Artist Magazine, Cape Cod Review, Cape Arts Magazine, Emerson’s Redivider, and Popt Art Journal. It has been selected for covers of Ibbetson Press, Bagels with the Bards anthologies, and individual poet collections. She is currently the Arts Editor/curator of Wilderness House Literary Review.
Bridget’s poetry is included in several anthologies and journals. Her collections of poems What Moments Yield was published in 2019, and Shorelines in 2024.
From the Artist:
My childhood was surrounded by the bohemian culture of artists, poets/writers musicians, dancers, and actors. This continued throughout my life from the early 50s and 60s in Greenwich Village to Provincetown Cape Cod, and now Somerville “The Paris of New England.”
My art is inspired from personal emotional memories both delightful and lamenting. Like my poetry it defines impressions of what was, what might have been, and is. This is either captured though being descriptive and narrative, or conceptual with a sense of romantic whimsy or melancholy.
From others:
All exhibited works on paper are framed in conservation glass. Also, Bridget produces commissioned portraits in water color and or pen and ink. Use the Contact form to inquire about pricing.