Gayleen Aiken Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1934 - d. 2005

Gayleen Aiken (March 25, 1934 – 2005) was a self-taught American artist[1] who lived her life in Barre, Vermont. Gayleen Aiken achieved critical acclaim during her lifetime for her naive paintings. Her work has been included in many exhibitions of visionary and folk art from the 1980s onwards. She is considered an Outsider artist.

In the early 80s Gayleen Aiken was discovered by Grass Roots Art & Community Effort (GRACE), a Vermont grass-roots arts organization.[3] The "Grass Roots Art and Community Effort's" exhibition program exhibited her work for the first time in.... GRACE, [1], a not-for-profit organization founded by artist Don Sunseri in 1975, works to discover, develop and promote the population of elders and other special constituencies in rural Vermont.


Gayleen Aiken produced paintings and drawings, that often combined narrative text and image, cardboard cut-outs, and book works;[4] her themes include music and musical instruments, the large old farmhouse where she grew up, the lyricism of Vermont’s seasons, the granite industry, and the pleasures and ordeals of rural life. These themes are threaded together by a cast of characters, members of an imaginary extended family, which she called The Raimbilli Cousins.

Jay Craven's 1985 documentary Gayleen details Gayleen's life and artworks.[5] Awards and was a recipient of a Vermont Council on the Arts fellowship. In 1997, Harry B. Abrams, Inc. released Moonlight and Music: The Enchanted World of Gayleen Aiken, produced with the novelist, Rachel Klein. Her artwork has been featured in The New York Times, Raw Vision, The Boston Globe, Smithsonian, and Folk Art Magazine.