Lance Corey
10 Windwood Court Westhampton, NY 11977
914 584-3257 rlancecorey@aol.com
Being Irish, Iroquois, and French Canadian: My values, my life-long love of history and learning; my politics, and my willingness to speak truth to power… these compel my art.
A child of Merrick, LI; A graduate of Mepham High School; Running track and body surfing, playing baseball, ice hockey, rugby and boxing; having been a Lifeguard and a broiler-man; artists’ model, bouncer, housecleaner/painter; gas station attendant and real estate agent; chauffer, butler and sewer man; Earning degrees in Communication Arts from Notre Dame ’71, Philosophy and Theology from Truman State ’76, and History and International Relations from Long Island University ’94; Winning Fulbright Scholarships to study in Egypt ’88 and China ’93; Teaching World History and Geography in NYC for 22 years; Taking 3 NYC students to live with the Maasai in Kenya for 2 weeks in 1990; Returning to Kenya to record their folk music and songs a month later… All these inform my art.
My training consisted of copying Georges Rouault and Amadeo Modigliani from photos of their art when I was age 11. That’s when I sold my first painting for $100. I am self-taught. I’ve been influenced by the Post Impressionists, the Expressionists and the Abstract Expressionists; they and Matisse, Picasso and Pollock opened the door to my Neo-Primitivism.
I exhibited five paintings in the infamous American Painters in Paris Exhibition of 1975-76 and I have spent the past 46 years attempting to obtain justice for the 700 – 1500 American artists victimized in that French Government tribute to our Bicentennial. Many of the artists were World War Two veterans or their off-spring like me. One of my Paris paintings, The Cherry Bowl, was selected by Esteban Vicente for a Purchase Award at the Firehouse Gallery in 1976 that placed it in the VP’s office at Nassau Community College. The sidewalks in Bridgehampton and Greenwich Village saw my paintings in the 1970s. It was then that I was encouraged by Willem DeKooning to keep painting. A WLIW-TV auction benefited from the 1982 sale of Song for Ulla. CUNY exhibited The Prisoner in the 1984 Art Against Apartheid Exhibition. From 2009-2015 I was a member of the Crazy Monkey Gallery and Studio E Gallery. I have exhibited with The White Room Gallery, The Remsenburg Academy, Mill Pond House, The Jeanie Tengelson Gallery, the East End Arts Council Gallery, Water Mill Museum, Guild Hall, & Ashawagh Hall. My memorial to the 9-11 attack What About the Children? is hanging in the HQs of Tuesday’s Children. Prometheus and the Captain is in the Snite Museum at the University of Notre Dame. The University will soon be gifted a large body of my work and my collection.
I am a member of the Artists Alliance of East Hampton, the Southampton Artists Association, and the Art League of Long Island. The first two have websites on which see my artwork.
Artist Statement:
I often use my art as a weapon, provoking and challenging the viewer to think. My demons, my passions and my missions in life are apparent in my art. In looking into my art viewers will see themselves as they see me.
Some describe my art as intellectual; others that it is full of passion. One thing many agree on is that my art has something to say.
An admirer wrote about my artwork:
“What I miss in the art of the 21st century is work that speaks to the existential human condition. Art that touches the core of us that is rarely spoken about in this dizzying age of technology. Lance Corey not only touches that core but rips away everything that masks it. He’s a primitive painter who paints without thinking. He paints from his innocence and acts as a channel for something deep within us all.”
While I have overheard some say they feel that their house pet could do as well, I see my main competition for attention coming from elephants, chimpanzees, and three-year-old prodigies.
