Dennis Corrigan 

Biography 

Dennis Corrigan was born in 1944 in Lakewood, New Jersey, and raised with his four brothers in Toms River, New Jersey. He attended Philadelphia College of Art where he received a BFA in Illustration in 1966, then, after a three-year stint in the Navy, an MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 1972. 

During the 1970’s Corrigan received worldwide recognition for his intricate pencil renderings of displaced pop political figures in congested, flattened nineteenth century inspired interiors. Such notable publishers as Random House in NYC, and Politiks Magazine commissioned him for the use of such images. The images, with titles such as Queen Victoria Troubled by Flies and President Nixon Hiding in a Small Town, were inspired in part by his love for Victorian architecture, and the fourteen room Italianate mansion in Hawley, PA where he resided with his first wife and daughters, Sara and Rebecca. It was during this time that Corrigan also produced two illustrated adult storybooks. The Spotter is the story of a Civil Air Patrol volunteer, who, out of boredom and opportunity, is compelled to take up voyeurism. The Amusement Park is a thinly veiled symbolic account of his impending divorce. 

In 1980, Corrigan married his second wife, Donna, also an artist, who inspired him to experiment with oil painting. Using an unconventional palette of oranges, greens and violets, and their intermixtures, he produced a series of dark and moody surreal landscapes, which served as backdrops for a cast of lonely and mysterious characters. Though these characters are no one in particular, we immediately recognize them as representatives of the human condition in raw form. The paintings, with titles like Red Madonna, Sly Cat at Sunset and Going Home, are among Corrigan’s more poignant, non-humorous works. It is not until the late 1980’s that Corrigan reduces his characters to a more simplified form, and introduces a humorous literary component to his work. The titles of these paintings, such as Nuts Looking for Squirrels, Three Men Holding a Grudge, and Man with a Smirk on His Face, further illuminate the visual pun that was the inspiration for the piece.  

The 1990’s found Dennis Corrigan venturing into the third dimension. A confirmed hoarder of “interesting shapes” and discarded materials, Corrigan was now combining and arranging disparate elements to create surreal objects. The richly adorned furniture-like pieces appear at first to have a particular function, but upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the stationary hinges, trap doors and staging devices are intended to merely entertain. These sculptures are of two separate varieties: purely objective, as with Portable Confessional and Fetish Object, and pictorial, as with Man Being Chased by a Furball. 

Corrigan’s latest works in video and humor are an amalgam of his previous interests with the addition of motion and sound. The most recent and compelling expression of Dennis’ life is a documentary film entitled “Corrigan vs. Corrigan”, wherein he is shown as a very humourous, extroverted introvert, seeking a much wider audience for his endless and increasing  flood of uniquely creative thoughts, expressed in drawings, paintings, sculpture, assemblage, and video.