STATEMENT

 

At its core, my practice is about radical joy and liberation. I am invested in a new paradigm of freedom and expanded consciousness.  Each piece contains a record of the process, informing the next as a roadmap to bridging the heart and mind. Stories contain emergent themes of our human experience on a micro and macro level engaged with the language of abstraction. Materiality and experimentation emphasize the parallels of rigorous play and invention. A victorious color field suffused with linguistic mark-making, biomorphic shapes, torn edges, sinuous gestures, and embellishments celebrates the energy of risk-taking. Layers of paint and other materials consider the tensions of space, perception, and belonging. My practice asks for a willingness to believe in the cosmic makeup of our DNA and to locate ourselves in the constellation of infinite possibilities.

​

​BIOGRAPHY

​

Cicely Carew (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA) is a Boston-based artist, mother, and educator whose multivalent practice spans installation, sculpture, painting, assemblage, printmaking, digital composites, and social praxis. Rooted in improvisation and spiritual embodiment, her vibrant language of abstraction signals the transformative power of joy and liberation. Across mediums and scales, Carew’s work invites viewers into a realm of healing and play.

​

Her stand-alone pieces carry an intimate charge, drawing in and activating the spaces they inhabit, while her large-scale, site-responsive installations create what critics have described as “sacred containers,” spaces of reflection, expanded perception, and embodied connection.

​

Her public commissions include Ambrosia at Boston’s Prudential Center (2021), a 5,000-square-foot suspended installation; Wishing Well for Jewish Arts Collaborative (2023), an interactive meditation space addressing healing and ancestral trauma in BIPOC communities; and a 2026 commission for New England Botanic Garden.

​

Carew's 2025 solo exhibition BeLOVEd at Fuller Craft Museum created what critic Cate McQuaid described as “a sacred container,” a place where visitors bring “all that’s so hard to understand and articulate in our lives” and leave transformed. Her Foster Prize exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston was noted by The Boston Globe for amplifying the themes of joy and liberation central to her practice.

​

An active contributor to the arts community, Carew serves on the Board of Directors of the Maria L. Baldwin Community Center. She has served as a juror for Fuller Craft Museum and Gallery 263, presented lectures at Lesley University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, The Art Complex Museum, and MassArt, and mentors MFA candidates. Her work is held in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, Boston Public Library, the U.S. Department of State Art in Embassies program, Google, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, among others.

​

Carew is a 2026 Collective Futures Fund awardee and a recipient of the James and Audrey Foster Prize (ICA Boston, 2023), Brother Thomas Fellowship (2023), and Blanche E. Colman Award (2022).

​

Carew lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.