Corinne Robbins

Enchanted by the idyllic Hudson Valley landscape that she calls home, artist Corinne Robbins has spent the better part of her painting career capturing details in nature and recreating them in her Caanan, NY painting studio. Her creative methods are shaped by inherent artistic inclination as well as pedagogical influence, the latter having occurred in Bennington College before completing her MFA at Hunter College. While she attributes much of her artistic identity—such as her slightly abstracted landscapes and preference for pallet knives over brushes—to her peers in art school and other famed artists (Milton Avery and Ellsworth Kelly, to name a few), she admits that she’s driven by a nostalgia for the “pure, unconscious, and very raw” approach to art that characterized her childhood. This creative freedom from societal influence, which she refers to as a sort of “innocence”, is voiced in the landscapes she creates today.

“I like to think of my work as liminal, not fully abstract and not exactly realistic,” she explains. Like an improvisational performance, these “liminal” paintings are both started and finished in one fluent session. Her process begins with a simple line drawing on white canvas. She then uses her pallet knife to fill in blocks of color, each hue present in and crucial to the blending of the next. Rich in texture as well as saturation, the finished painting is a bold and tactile deconstruction of nature’s hidden beauty.

Celebrating the ephemeral, Robbins writes: “Nothing in nature is stationary, but for a moment I will see something in its essential form and take that memory back to the studio. I don’t care so much about recreating what I saw exactly, but rather evoking its emotional value through color and shape.” She adds, in a manner that longs for nature’s effortless artistry, “I want the action of painting to simply flow like it did when I was five.”

Resume

I earned a MFA degree in Painting and Printmaking at Hunter College in New York City and a BA degree in Fine Art at Bennington College in Vermont before working as a studio manager and assistant to Judy Pfaff, McArthur Award winner installation artist. Early in my career as an art handler, installing exhibitions and archiving works of art, I worked at Galerie Zabriskie in Paris, Holly Solomon, Max Protetch and The Warhol Foundation in New York, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY and The Whitney Museum, New York, NY to name a few. Never letting go of my commitment to my personal work, I began collecting modern furniture during my travels and shopped religiously at the 26th Street Flea Market in Manhattan where I made most of my connections to the vintage furniture world. I quickly became a specialist in Mid-Century Modern Design and eventually opened my 20th Century Modern furniture store in New York's fashionable Meatpacking District specializing in high-end American, European and Danish designs. Today, Corinne Robbins Inc caters to architects and designers who are looking for original pieces. My furniture has appeared on the set of such movies and shows as The Wolf of Wall Street, American Gangster, Person of Interest, Antiques Road Show and Sex and The City (both the TV show and the movie). The shop now operates as an intimate studio/showroom in the Hudson Valley showcasing a curated group of designer furniture along side my artwork. Recently, I finished an eleven paintings commission for WinGate Wilderness in Utah, of my interpretation of the Symbols of Change.

Recent Exhibitions:

2016 OCCS, Old Chatham, NY

2014 Silent Omissions, Foliage Pop-Up, New York, NY

2014 DUMBO Arts Festival, Brooklyn, NY

2010 MDH Fine Arts, New York, NY

2008 MDH Fine Arts, New York, NY

2005 Michael Salmon Gallery, New York, NY