Christian Cardell Corbet
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Christian Cardell Corbet (born January 31, 1976) is a Canadian painter, sculptor and designer.
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[edit] Early life
Born at Pickering Beach, Ontario, he was raised by his paternal grandparents A. J. Corbet II and Alice Charlotte Corbet (née Gould), descendants of a prominent family from Guernsey and a theatrical family from London. At a very young age, he developed a strong interest in the fine arts while working with his grandfather on commercial signs. Due to increasingly ill health, by the age of 14 he was not able to participate in regular sports like most children his age, so his grandparents strongly encouraged him to paint and sculpt. Being raised predominantly on the shores of Lake Ontario he always held a close fascination with water, water formations and its power which to this very day has become a main theme for his paintings.
[edit] Studies
In 1991, the artist moved to Guelph, Ontario and studied at the University of Guelph. In 1994 he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to open his first studio where he started selling his paintings. In the spring of 1995 his painting entitled "Elizabeth Holding Her Ribbon" a portrait of the Queen Mother was acquired by the Queen Mother for her private collection.[citation needed] On March 7, 1997 Corbet founded Canada's first official portrait academy the "Canadian Portrait Academy" which was lauded by Governor General Roméo LeBlanc.[citation needed]
Working primarily in a realist form, he has made a large body of work depicting "ice themes" namely icebergs, ice floes and pressure ice. These paintings have made him well-known, but it is his finely executed sculptures, in particular art medallions, that he is well-known for. These rare art forms, generally less than ten inches in diameter and created in bronze, wax and mixed media, have brought the artist international acclaim.[citation needed]
From 1996 to 1997 he studied at McMaster University at Hamilton, Ontario in the anatomy laboratories in order to gain greater knowledge of the human form; an exercise which has taught him not only about the human body but also the spiritual aspect of the human as a being. During this time he was a private student of Canadian sculptor Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook, where she introduced the artist to the art medallion. In 1997, he founded and was the first elected President of the Canadian Portrait Academy which thrives to this day.
In 2000, the artist moved back to Ontario to care for his grandmother. There he spent many hours sculpting and painting along the waterfront. It was then that the artist started to study theosophy more and reflected on his iceberg themes in a more spiritual manner. In the same year he founded his private art collection, the "Corbet Collection of Canadian Women Artists" which serves as an educational visual tool to help teach people about the importance of women's roles in Canadian art history. This collection was influenced by the artist's close friendships with many of Canada's more important women artists who saw themselves as having been overshadowed by their male counterparts.
In 2003, Corbet accepted the position of Forensic Artist with the University of Western Ontario where he reconstructed the facial image of a 2,200 year old Egyptian mummy based on CT and laser scans. This work, a life-size sculpture, brought the artist greater acclaim and was featured in a two part documentary on the Discovery Channel. He continues to do important anthropological reconstructions to this day. Also in 2003, Corbet had his first 10 year retrospective in his home town of Ajax, Ontario.
In 2007 Corbet's first solo exhibition in Guernsey, Channel Islands was celebrated with a special 18 person choral performance in his honour by the Guernsey Choir and Symphony and a quarter peal of the Vale Church bells upon his last day on the isle.
To date Corbet is represented in over 50 important museum and art gallery permanent collections around the world.[citation needed]
[edit] Recent works and noted subjects
Currently, Corbet continues to develop his iceberg themes as well as work on portrait medallions. As of early 2006 a principle canvas was created for the international charity World Visionand was publicly unveiled on 26th March 2008.Mayor Hazel McCallion, CM lauded Corbet for this major canvas.[citation needed] He is also known as a mentor to many aspiring artists around the world, freely giving advice and more importantly encouraging their dreams and aspirations in all endeavours of life.
Corbet's recent works include a relief sculpture for the Cumberland County Museum and Archives of R. B. Dickey, which was lauded by the Premier of Nova Scotia Rodney MacDonald.[citation needed] Other recent medallion commissions include Laura Muntz Lyall, William Bauld, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir Wilfred Grenfell among others.[citation needed]
Some of Corbet's more noted subjects include Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Jane Goodall, F. H. Varley, Dorothy Livesay, Jane Addams, Jean Coulthard, George Stanley, Margaret Atwood, Gutzon Borglum, Louis Riel, C. H. Chadderton, Samuel Torrey Orton, Sir Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook to name but a few. Corbet's works have been collected by over 50 international art galleries and museums[citation needed] and is represented in numerous publications including Canadian Who's Who and Who's Who in Canada.[citation needed]
An interesting note is that since his grandmother's death in 2004, Corbet has sculpted or painted her name, "Alice", in almost all his works.
