Collection: Corey Drieth - Found Objects

For the past fifteen years I have spent almost all my time in the studio making delicate small-scale abstract paintings. Inspired by daily life, the natural world, art history and religious traditions such as Zen Buddhism and Quaker Christianity, this work explores contemplative spiritual experience. Like many people today I want to define my own spiritual path and do so by borrowing from multiple theological, literary, and artistic precedents. Subsequently, my goal is to create an iconography that is both deeply personal and highly evocative; I want to make lyrically poetic objects that are simultaneously intimate, mysterious, and expansive.

My process begins with the basic design and construction materials of gouache, gesso, and wood. Through the economical use of line, color, texture, and the illusion of light and space, I create a visual dialogue between painted surface and unprimed wooden substrate. The sometimes awkward, sometimes tense, sometimes graceful relationships that occurs embodies my own search for meaning - the search for a balance between the inner and the outer, the intuitive and the rational, the timeless and temporary - a search that is defined by the ritual of making and remaking. Ultimately, I believe that experiences of subtle structural beauty can be incredibly valuable. Because they require quietude during a time of de-humanizing speed, clutter, and noise, they serve as both a foil to the frenetic activity of contemporary life and as a method of sustenance within it.