Page 82 - Southern Oregon Magazine Summer 2022

feature | art tour

THE ART OF

REPLENISHING THE SOUL

Local artists and galleries

lynn leissler

ur region abounds with numerous artists and galleries. So,
with apologies to many, we present but a small sampling.
We urge you to go, see, enjoy these artists and galleries,
Othen seek out others. Pause to appreciate what you like and
be open to liking something new and different.

ARTISTS

COREY KAHN

Corey Kahn grew up painting alongside her artist mother (also a psy-
chologist), and later attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Early in her career,
she lived overseas and exhibited her artwork, as well as teaching English.
Returning to the states, she knew she wanted to create art and to help
people. As a mental health worker in Chicago, she escorted patients
to the Emergency Department, and there the lightbulb went off. She
would become a doctor.

Today Corey is an Emergency Physician. And an artist. The two
endeavors aren’t as divergent as you might suppose. At the hospital,
she expresses compassion and helps heal the body; in her studio, she
expresses creativity and helps heal the soul.

Generally, her mixed-media abstract pieces are landscapes, and she
works large, feeling freedom. There is intensity in the medical field, and
art allows her to “disappear into a land of expression.” Corey sees art as
a metaphor of life – despite death, war, and a lot of craziness, one can
still make something beautiful and meaningful. Just as life is about the
layering of events, her art is about the layering of materials. She uses
wrapping paper, antique books (not repairable), maps, architectural
plans, etc., plus paint, pencil, markers, even food items. Things are put
on, taken off. “In the end, when nothing else needs to happen, that’s
when I stop.”

The finished piece is a story of addition and subtraction, of places and
people, of events. In life there are opposites—sense and senselessness,
fear and freedom, sadness and happiness.

“Figuring out a way to move through those experiences, expressing the
feelings visually, is what painting does for me.”

80 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | summer 2022