A passion for unconventional art
Published:Sunday | June 26, 2022 | 12:06 AMSade Gardner - Arts and Education Writer - -
Unconventional is one of CoryKevaun’s favourite words, and also his approach for creating art.
Distancing himself from still-life artwork and portrait drawings (reasoning that one can merely blow up a photo), he instead leans towards abstract creations inspired by his experiences in different environments, amplified by the unconventional: “garbage”, fashion, and a creative process independent of planning.
“The abstract approach that I take is really to let creativity be free … ,” the 27-year-old told Arts & Education. “I allow my creative juices and intuitiveness to flow, and I think it always just happens to create something beautiful. I think art should be like that.”
This perpetuates in his favourite piece, ‘Summer in January – Protect Her’, which, actualised after overwhelming events, led him to a riverside in St Andrew.
“It was my first time sitting at a riverside and paying attention to the sky, water, my surroundings, even the bad things like pollution.”
With Mia Mottley’s 2021 UN Climate Change Conference speech as his mental soundtrack to the scene, he documented the sound of water with blue, the lush of nature with green, and used vibrant red to symbolise the intuitiveness rushing through his veins. Flowing through the piece is the theme of garbage, captured with a haunting grey.
VIBRANT COLOURS
CoryKevaun uses vibrant colours to inject his personality and imaginative brain into his artwork, like the molecular wonder ‘My Wildest Dreams’. It was inspired by his experience trapped in a flooded subway in New York, US, last year, and the overall eventful essence of the city.
“It was when they had that freak storm (Hurricane Ida), and I was actually on a train the night it was happening, and it was scary,” he shared. “New York is a place that pops. It full a excitement ... . You see so many things: people dancing on the train, having sex, people injecting themselves with all sorts of things in the subway. It was wild but amazing, which I was trying to explore with the colours and different patterns.”
Given name Cory Robinson, he was raised in Montego Bay, St James, where his relationship with art started. He would observe his mother making posters, birthday cards, and more for small businesses in their community and started his own creations while attending Barrett Town All-Age School. His professional career started at this level as he would be paid to do produce drawings for local shops though he found other creative outlets by entering competitions hosted by his school and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission.
Needless to say, he knew he wanted to pursue a career in art since childhood but was met with the age-old narrative that being an artist is a low-paying hobby. He was even advised to do architecture instead, the fundamentals of which he did at William Knibb Memorial High School. But even after moving on to Herbert Morrison Technical High School for sixth form, he couldn’t forsake his passion.
“I reintroduced the art programme there because they didn’t have enough students registered for it. I gathered some students. We went to different high schools to look at how their programmes were set up and reintroduced it at Herbert Morrison in my final year of sixth form.”
A distinction (up from his Grade Three pass in CSEC) was God’s wink that art was his calling, and CoryKevaun enrolled at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts for sculpting (major) and painting (minor). He left after a year and a half, describing the curriculum as too basic for the tuition. He added: “I think I got enough of what I needed to branch off and become an independent artist. Ever since, it has just been me, the Internet, and even travelling and those things have really broadened my horizon to view art from a different perspective.”
CULTURAL AND COMMUNICATION
He recently completed studies at the University of the West Indies which have added cultural and communication lenses to his approach to art, but he has not neglected his affinity for sculpting. His ‘Unconventional’ series highlights his knack for using “dead things” in the environment.
“Oftentimes we see dead things and think they don’t have use or value, so that is what inspired me in pursuing this type of art where I’d see a dead plant and think ‘Cool1 This could be used to create something beautiful and meaningful’, and I think I’ve put my life in my artwork where I’m constantly growing. In layman’s terms, moving from nothing to something.”
He sees himself becoming a huge international brand, expanding to fuse fashion and art. He has already dabbled in the latter, putting hand-painted prints on various clothing items and producing what he calls a “walk of art”.
“Alexander McQueen used to do prints, and he’s one of my inspirations, so I think fashion and art and the whole unconventionality of that is going to be a thing for me. I love sculpture just the same, so I’m definitely going to incorporate it and fashion in my work, using dead things in the environment just the same or things weh people nuh really have use for.”
CoryKevaun can be contacted via Instagram @corykevaun.jpg