It’s Great to Meet You!

Hi, I'm Cortney Jacobsen, a self-taught visual artist and writer. My two decades living in the Pacific Northwest gave me an appreciation for nature, which I’ve taken with me to my current home in New York City.

My work explores identity, specifically two questions:

• Who are we when we're somewhere unfamiliar? and

• Who do we become when we are pulled back to where we started from?

I answer these questions through various mediums - abstract paintings built from dreams, sketches and essays collected during travel, nature-inspired collage, and gothic fiction.

For 25 years, I built a career in tech. I climbed, I grinded, I eventually burned out - and when I left, it didn't feel like starting over so much as coming home. I've been at the intersection of art, technology, and storytelling since before I knew that was a thing. I studied music engineering technology in college, ran a university recording studio, and carried that same "art meets systems" instinct into two decades of product management.

Coming back to art now is less a reinvention than a return to a thread I started awhile ago.

That background is why I don't just call myself an artist - I call myself an artrepreneur. I believe art is the most timeless, universal form of human connection, and I believe my business skills can sharpen and expand the reach of art. A lot of creative people aren't drawn to the business side of things, and that’s exactly where I see my contribution to the art world.

I'm endlessly curious, and I plan to stay that way, following whatever medium the work calls for, and staying just as interested in the space where art, technology, and storytelling overlap as in any one of them alone.

My mission is to make art about travel and identity, and build the tools and community to help more of it find its way into the world.