[ B I O G R A P H Y ]

Corinne Geertsen grew up on the plains of Montana. She developed a rich inner life and an affinity for strong horizon lines and big skies. She always drew.

Her father was a psychologist. Psychologists at that time would often show someone a set of dramatic pictures and ask them to make up a story about each picture. Geertsen spent a lot of time with the picture plates of her father's tests, fascinated by the ties between stories and images. As a result, she moves easily between story line and image and back again as she works, nuancing her work with psychological twists.

She has always enjoyed animals, which are often central to the design and content of her work. At the age of seven, she dragged a horse home and put him in the backyard, in case he was lost. She studied drawing and painting at Brigham Young University where she acquired a B.A. and an M.F.A. in drawing and painting. Photoshop and digital art did not yet exist.

Much later she took a Photoshop course to restore old family photos. Two weeks into the class she began seeing her ancestors as characters in dramas. “Photoshop matches the way I think,” she says. “When I first found Photoshop, I felt I had discovered the other half of the map.” Working digitally dovetails nicely with the way her mind works.

Her work spans more than a century and a half of technology. She uses Civil War and Victorian era studio portraits as source material, yet she works digitally on a computer with massive memory, deep within the technical intricacies of Photoshop. She enjoys the contrast and challenges of working with multiple technologies.

Geertsen currently lives and works in Mesa, Arizona.

[ S T A T M E N T ]

I assemble my works digitally from photos of my ancestors (making occasional ancestor adoptions at thrift stores) and from my expanding archive of over 70,000 photos.

It’s all about remix.

I’m on a constant photographic scavenger hunt, outfitting ancestors with backdrops, sidekicks and belongings.

I print my work myself in small editions on archival photo paper with pigment inks.

My images are quirky visual narratives about psychological predicaments. I especially like a good plight.

My art leans toward surrealism, as it has odd juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, and an element of surprise.

My work content mirrors personal, political and global situations – in a sly way.

My work is a packrat’s nest of things that are deeply a part of being alive: humor, fear, rescue, curiosity, individuality, absurdity.