Saint Sebastian and His Cat by Corinne Geertsen BGAS25

Corinne Geertsen

I drew the world around me since I could hold a crayon. My father was a psychologist. I was intrigued with the picture plates of my father’s tests, which were designed to evoke strong narratives. I was intrigued by the connections between stories and images and studied the pictures. As a result, I move easily between story line and image and back again as I work. I live for a psychological twist. I’m a reader. I enjoy a strong story line with richness, complications and thunderbolts of the “I never saw THAT coming!” variety. I read books by authors on the technique of writing fiction to make my work stronger. I grew up with psychology and science. My pictures are full of cause and effect and plight. I have always enjoyed connections with animals. When I was seven, I dragged a horse home and put him in the backyard, in case he was lost. Savvy animals are agents of change in many of my works. I studied at Brigham Young University, where I received a B.A. and an M.F.A. in drawing and painting. Photoshop and digital art did not yet exist. Later I took a Photoshop course to restore old family photos. Two weeks into the class it became obvious that Aunt Agnes looked much better with a rhinoceros. I felt I had discovered the other half of the map. Working digitally dovetails nicely with the way my mind works. I work from my growing archive of the 70,000 photos I’ve taken and some old photos I’ve found. As I write this, I have 1752 photos of bears alone. My work sources more than a century and a half of technology. I use Civil War and Victorian era studio portraits as source material and I work digitally on a computer with massive memory, deep within the technical intricacies of Photoshop. I find the contradiction and complexity of working with multiple technologies irresistible. A typical picture might combine an old tintype, a photo I took of an elk today, and a drawing I made with pastels. I live in Mesa, Arizona. I work there and wherever there might be a good picture to take. It’s important to me to honor my dear LGBTQ friends with my artwork.