Seeking gallery representation.
Bio
Serena Viola Corson (b. 1996) is an American artist, currently working and studying as an MFA candidate and graduate assistant at LSU.
CV
Solo + Two Person Shows
2026 MFA Thesis Show, Glassell Gallery, Baton Rouge LA
2022 Flora and Font, The Mill, San Francisco CA
2021 The Appalachia of Florida: Welcome to Bithlo by the Water, The Plant, Tallahassee FL
Group Exhibitions
2025 AXA Art Prize, New York Academy of Art, New York NY
2024 Oddkin, Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco CA
2023 A Ripple in the Garden, Soft Times Gallery, San Francisco CA
2023 Bay Area Contemporary Art Show, The Dojo, San Francisco CA
2022 Crimson, Soft Times Gallery, San Francisco CA
2022 Pamplemousse, Pamplemousse Gallery, Richmond VA
2022 No Way Out But Through, Berkley Art Center, Berkley CA
2022 Melting, SFWA Gallery, San Francisco CA June
2022 Tides of Change, Drawing Room SF, San Francisco CA
2021 Florida Show, Moisturizer Gallery, Gainesville FL
2021 What Does Community Look Like To You?, Brush Art Gallery, Lowell MA
2020 See Your Neighbor (virtual), 621 Gallery, Tallahassee FL
2020 Artist Relief Exhibition (virtual) Kole Trent Gallery, Cocoa Beach FL
2019 Remote Dialogue, The University of West Georgia, Carrollton GA
2019 From Creation to Creator: E.W.G.’s Second Annual Art Show, Tallahassee FL
2018 Girls Who Draw Girls, 621 Gallery, Tallahassee FL
2017 Faces, Grassroots Coffee Shop & Gallery, Thomasville GA
Grants/Awards
2022 Juror's Award, No Way Out But Through, Berkley Art Center
2022 Juror's Award, Melting, San Francisco Women Artists Gallery
2019 FSU Art Department Travel Grant
2019 IDEA Grant Recipient
2019 Susan & Mark Messersmith Art Scholar Award
2019 SIX Research and Creative Grant
2019 People’s Choice Award at Remote Dialogue Exhibition, UWG
Commissions
Illustrator, Focail na mBan: Women’s Words by Manchán Magan (Book, 2024)
Publications/Press
2022 Harvard Alumna, Kristen Ghodsee, with her new Serena Viola Corson painting
https://scholar.harvard.edu/kristenghodsee/blog/amazing-painting-serena-viola-corson
2022 Mystic Moon Mamas and Matisse: What inspires artist Serena Viola Corson
https://48hills.org/2022/08/mystic-moon-mamas-and-matisse-what-inspires-artist-serena-viola-corson/
2022 No Way Out But Through, Curator's Essay,
https://www.berkeleyartcenter.org/no-way-out-but-through
2021 No Islands: Serena Viola Corson documentary by Cluessa, https://vimeo.com/581606271
2020 Finding Your Niche with Serena Corson, https://goodfit.us/blogs/goodfit-artists/finding-your-niche-with-serena-corson
2018 Contemporary Art as Liberation: Serena V.C.K. and the Phyllis Straus Art Gallery, https://www.hercampus.com/school/fsu/contemporary-art-liberation-serena-vck-and-phyllis-straus-art-gallery? fbclid=IwAR1C95Dh927XQtehwc-8Gmd7oHW7S9eKU6uuDdad1KOASDe R4FsyWvSihEc
Artist Statement
In these times of loneliness and isolation, I paint moments of collective joy that nourish my soul and make life worth living. I’m drawn to Donna Haraway’s definition of ‘oddkin,’ which refers to having solidarity across species and forming alternative and queered family dynamics. Pulling from both memory and fantasy, I paint myself and friends lying around in the sun, enjoying time off work. These paintings are in conversation with the depictions of leisure by Cezanne, Seurat, and Pissarro. I'm continuing the tradition of nude figurative painting, but through an eco-feminist lens—one that challenges and subverts the male gaze. Love and a sustained hope for a better world inform my art practice in every way.
Formally, my work draws upon Expressionism’s focus on immediacy, subjective experience, and the emotional/spiritual. It is a rejection of classical realism and the emphasis on accurate mimesis that has dominated European painting since the Enlightenment. The historical shift away from distortion and collective representation, toward hyperrealism and individual portraiture, reflected the Enlightenment’s broader move from the magical and irrational to the scientific and mechanical. I am interested in reviving what was lost and painting in a free, intuitive, and gestural way that mirrors the liberatory themes within my work. My brushwork becomes an assertion of freedom, resisting control and discipline in favor of openness and possibility. In this sense, both the content and style of my paintings work together to imagine alternative ways of being: playful, embodied, and interconnected.
