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Artist's
Biography
I have lived most of my life at Lake Herman, near Madison, SD. Despite numerous enjoyable travels and extended stays in places like Boston, Edmonton, Moscow, and Vancouver, I remain convinced that Lake Herman is the best place in the world to live...and to paint pictures.
I learned most of what I know about art from Jill Frederick in Madison. My favorite artists are John Singer Sargent, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock. During high school and college, my paintings tended toward portrait and still life. At the turn of the century, though, I began leaning toward non-representational art. While I admire the well-executed, lovingly crafted likeness of a daydreaming friend or a shimmering lake, I feel a desire to create something completely new, something unlike anything I see while bicycling across the prairie in July or snowshoe-ing across the lake in December.
I
majored in math in college, but from 1998 to 2007 I taught high school
English. Most recently I was the English department at
Montrose
High School, where I also coached oral
interpretation, debate, and drama. Those activities gave me another
outlet for my
artistic energy, as I wrote one-act plays and
readers theater scripts for my students to perform at contests, built
minimal yet effective sets for our tiny school stage at the end of
the gym, and directed plays in the fall and winter. In fall 2007, I
will begin doctoral studies in information systems at Dakota State University.
While I love teaching and researching, painting in the summer is a pleasant escape from the classroom. I generally work outside, where I can saw and paint and glue and frame without worrying about getting the house or the shed all dusty and speckly.
Between paintings, I keep busy riding my 5 bicycles; circumnavigating Lake Herman by canoe, kayak, and snowshoes (depending, obviously, on the season); working on the house and yard; writing occasional commentaries on local politics; and, with the help of my wife Erin and daughter Katarzyna, saving the world one good idea at a time.
©2001-2007
Cory Allen Heidelberger, Lake Herman Dreamworks. Last modified
2007.06.14