Hi there, my name is Cory and I love art. There’s something about the process of art-making that motivates me to keep searching for truth. I feel driven to become a better person by showing up to the easel, showing up for my community, and most importantly witnessing the transformations that happen through painting. I started making art as a small child, I can remember painting animals, musical instruments, and rainbows. My interest in art developed due to having an amazingly supportive grandmother and mother, an artist aunt, and a triumphant older sister. I remember my grandmother taking my sister and I to New York City where my aunt would pick us up and we would draw in my aunt’s apartment in Gramercy Park. She took us to museums and onto the rooftop of her building and we painted the Empire State Building. I always had a sketchbook and created small projects with my friends while growing up on the Jersey Shore.
By the time I went to high school, my sister had nearly completed a 2 year vocational training in the Fine and Graphic Arts. I wanted to follow in her footsteps and prove that I could be just as creative as she was, so I applied to the same program and fell in love with painting. I met a dear friend and we pushed our desks together and always drew together when we should have been listening. I learned about various art materials, making sketchbooks, and how to use graphic design programs.
The typical step would have been to go to a traditional art university but I chose to go to a radical institution: Hampshire College, a liberal arts school that emphasizes alternative pedagogies over numerical grades. In the summer months I began live painting in 2013 when I toured with an art collective who painted together and installed mobile art exhibitions in the North East, USA. During my last year, I set out to paint portraits and took a workshop from Amanda Sage at CoSM. In 6 days of the workshop I learned more about painting and technique than 3 years of college art classes. After graduating in 2016, I felt that my understanding of art in a contemporary age was strong but I sought to deepen my perspective on the technical craft of painting and knowledge of art history.
I live in the vibrant city of Berlin, Germany. It’s my home base and I am very grateful to be in Europe where many museums can be visited, languages can be heard, and cultures can intermingle. I travelled to take a workshop in Montenegro with Oleg Korolev in 2018 and have noticed a huge shift in my practice since then. I also painted with Kevin Campeau in Vienna and have developed my own unique approach to painting through osmosis of multiple teacher’s techniques and movements in art history.
My influences range from 14th Century paintings to early Impressionism, and includes fantastical realism, contemporary realism, and the movement of visionary art. I pull from a combination of the Mischtechnik, Alla Prima, and Venetian methods adapted from the Italian and Dutch masters. I use acrylic and oil paints and I prepare primed panels or stretched primed canvas to block in forms with broad strokes. I cycle through color glazing and layering thicker textures until there are no brushstrokes left to paint. My product is a result of opaque textures and translucent layers of optical colors.
Painting is a manifestation of the expression of my research into the metaphysical realm. My work utilizes landscapes inspired by nature and characters who emerge from journeys in my inner realm. As I make a painting, I balance the calculated preparations of my research, drawings, and imagery with the guiding energy of intuition. I am obsessed with the contemplative beauty in nature and feel an urge to catalyze the magical act of creativity through the unseen depths of human perception.
events & exhibitions
Vision Train Conductor, Berlin, 2020
Odyssee Pyschedelic Music and Arts Festival, Berlin, 2020
Free Earth Festival, Greece, 2019
Visionary Art Trip Belgrade, Serbia, 2019
Visionarium Festival, Catalonia, 2019
Visionary Art Trip, Moscow, 2019
Projektraum 145, Berlin, 2018, 2019
O.Z.O.R.A. Festival, Hungary, 2018
Flicken Fahrradmarkt, Berlin 2017, 2018
VELOBerlin, Berlin, 2018
Visionary Arts Award, Moscow, 2018
Haight St. Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2017
LEAF Festival, NC, 2017
EarthDance Healing Arts Program, FL 2016
SFHDC Music Festival, CA, 2016
Flaming Lotus Girls Burning Man, NV, 2016
Harold F. Johnson Gallery, MA 2016
LEAF Downtown, NC, 2016
Three Days of Light Gathering, NC, 2016
Disc Jam Music Festival, MA 2014, 2015
Cosmic Alignment Festival of the Arts, NY, 2014, 2015
Wild Woods Music and Arts, NH, 2014, 2015
Janotta Gallery, MA, 2015
Hemp Festival, ME, 2014
F.A.R.M. Fest, NJ, 2014
Paradise Music and Arts Festival, KY, 2014
The Big Up Festival, NY, 2013
Fall Down Festival, CT, 2013