‘Cody TheCreative’ grew up in New York, and started drawing at two years old. For most of his early childhood, he rarely put his pencil down. Among his earliest endeavors, he paused VHS tapes to draw his favorite characters, as well as those appearing on album covers and baseball cards. At just eight years old, he had a solo exhibition in Greenburgh, NY titled, Heroes and Icons. Cody then, in adolescence, fell off the art wagon.
While finishing his college degree in Creative Writing at SUNY Purchase, his love for art was reignited. He took a life-drawing course with noted visual arts professor, Roger Hendricks. As an elective, he assumed it would be a simple way to earn an ‘A’ as well as complete his degree. The next thing he knew, he became the teacher's assistant (and, for no credit!).
For most of his early years and well into his twenties, Cody's work was about detail. Both his subject matter (portraiture) and his medium (graphite) seemed to be intrinsically detail oriented to him. It wasn't until Cody took a summer class with landscape artist, Todd Gordon, who inspired Cody to explore nature as a subject that he was forced to loosen up a bit. Up until that time, Cody had only drawn people. This exploration of art through nature (or nature through art) has become one of Cody's favorite creative endeavors. He immersed himself in his art with a passionate fervor and considered himself a serious artist. During the years it took him to stop outlining things, adjust to the new medium, and let the shapes interact with each other, the intent, however, remained the same – replicate.
While in his mid-twenties, he began working on #CodysPastels, and as a result of working with the new medium, took on an Impressionist approach. Cody has since traveled all across the United States simply to draw a place he has never seen. He carried this same intention during his travels to Puerto Rico and Italy: to capture nature in art. Cody is now recognized as a member of the Pastel Society of America. Among his current goals, he plans to travel to all 50 states in order to draw or paint from nature.
In his late twenties, when he began to play with paint, he ventured further to explore both Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism (possibly to cope with the new challenges that the medium presented.) Cody has also been inspired by the concept of the unconventional canvas, which so far has resulted in him painting on things from sneakers, to clothing/apparel, to keys, to pennies! He brings a fun, playful approach to these everyday mediums, and in a brief period, his #PennyPopArt has transformed into a fully developed body of work made up of hundreds of pieces in the Miniaturist genre. This collection has brought Cody attention from some of his favorite pop icons, as well as acknowledgment from the art world.
Cody has found avenues to continue to explore all of the aforementioned genres of art. He paints Abstract Expressionist sneakers, Impressionist plein-air pastel drawings, and both Minimalist and detail-oriented paintings on pennies. While his artistic pallet is broad, one constant for Cody has been his attention to pop culture. Beginning with his first ‘Heroes and Icons’ exhibition; to his first professional series of charcoal portraits, ‘#CodysFamousFacesCollection,’(all hand-delivered to over 50 of their respective subjects including Jamie Foxx, Nick Cannon, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dogg, Drake, Rihanna, and Kendrick Lamar among others); to his current use of sneakers as canvas, and the subject matter of his #PennyPopArt.
Cody is currently an LA based artist, exhibiting his work all over southern California.