Corey KILMARTIN

Corey Kilmartin (a.k.a chaosxcolor) is an emerging artist born in 1980 focusing on street and neo-expressionism art. Upon graduating from Design school in Toronto Canada, he went to work as a graphic artist, and later a creative director. Eventually the fashion industry called, and he has worked the past 10 years in New York City.

Working as a fashion designer and brand owner has helped mold his street style, brand building strategy and design capsule cohesion. This on top of traveling the globe has helped round out his culture. It wasn’t until the recent COVID pandemic that he finally got back to painting. Once started, the work flowed out and chaosxcolor was born.

The overarching work concept is the exploration of evolution, and or de-evolution. Specifically as it pertains to humans and the oncoming artificial intelligence (AI) push. A sub exploration is the juxtaposition of religion of faith vs religion of mind. Specifcally how AI would interpret this. The paintings present these new “beings” far into their evolution and built society.

Would it change from ours? Would they learn from our mistakes? Or is it all a predictable cycle.

The work stretches from paper, to canvas, to drywall to up-cyled DIY canvas. Corey Kilmartin believes that art is expression and can’t be confined to medium or application. Much like society wants to confine with rules and invisible walls, art has to be open and highly expressive.

The body of work is characterized by vibrant colors, heavy textures/distressing and emphasis on eyes as vessels for revealing emotion. Mediums are aerosol/acrylic/oil sticks/pastels and graphite amongst others.
Texture and distressing are achieved with high density metallics and under-base color exacto scratching.
Another passion is conceiving and buiding up- cycled tools and canvases.

For Corey Kilmartin, Art is simplified into two cores… concept and delivery… “I must always makes sure to push boundaries in both.”

Other interests are playing music (drums/guitar) and time with his wife and 3 young kids when not traveling. “All these creative outlets have fused into a creative force that is chaosxcolor.”