An Inspired Chat with Corey La Rue of East Hollywood

We recently had the chance to connect with Corey La Rue and have shared our conversation below.

Corey, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What are you chasing, and what would happen if you stopped?
I’m chasing my dreams. If I ever stopped, I think I would stop living.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Corey La Rue, artist and activist based in Hollywood, CA. I’m a painter with a focus on the landscape, Chicano cultural heritage, psychology, and zen-buddhism. I’m a survivor and disabled-losing the use of my right arm and hand after a near fatal motorcycle accident in 2023. I currently make all of my paintings with one arm and hand, which was reconstructed after suffering from several compound fractures.

There are moments where the pain from my accident is inescapable, and I live with pain in my body from severed nerves, broken and compressed bones within my spine and neck-but I use this pain as motivation to paint and to make art. There’s certain techniques that I’ve learned from my meditation practice to transmute suffering into something healing-finding peace in chaos, quietness in the storm.

It is my hope that others will read my story, find inspiration and believe in themselves. Often we look to a higher power, but I’ve found that this higher power is really a power that comes from within. Some call it a soul or spirit. I don’t believe in those things, but I do believe in people and I believe that everyone has within them the power to survive and accomplish the impossible-if you dig deep you’ll find it.

On that note there are several organizations that I am affiliated with. The first is an organization that is close to my heart-Project Paint and the second is much like it, the Last Prisoner Project. Both of these organizations work with the incarcerated, in areas of rehabilitation and justice for those unjustly imprisoned. I support these organizations both in contributing to joint shows and in letter writing. Letters for those imprisoned are often the only contact they have with the outside and I write as a reminder that we are all connected and that we are all human.

I am currently working on several projects and I’m so glad to say that a poem I’ve written is soon to be published with Angel City Review, which I’m very grateful for being included in Los Angeles’ literary scene is something I’ve always dreamed of and I’m very grateful.

I’m also involved with a new artist residency in Aspen, CO., called Rogue Projects. The concept of the residency is to embrace the wild-free from the constraints of gallery walls, to do and express something unique and special that is both interesting and off the path. I love that about this residency and it’s something I’m really looking forward to.

I’m also planning some events and showcases with Gallery Mariposa Los Angeles, a project space I created with my wife, and some friends in San Diego and their gallery called False Cast. False Cast is a really unique project that I’ve been affiliated with since 2020, and I’m grateful for the prospects of working together again on a collaborative project-that highlights California coastal artists.

I’m also continuing to work with my gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico called Smoke The Moon with my work available this holiday season in their benefit show for the New Mexico Food Bank-called 500 and Below. With 25% of the sales donated to those in need, this is something I am glad to participate in.

There’s more I have in the works, including a return trip to Boston and a planned lecture at UMass Art, but more on this later…

Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What breaks the bonds between people—and what restores them?
What breaks bonds, I feel, is the violation of trust. Trust is something special and sacred. Culture and community could not exist without it, and once trust is gone the world seems to fall apart.

What can restore broken bonds? I’m not sure. Perhaps time, maybe love. Being honest though, once my trust is violated I tend to close the door. My time is too precious to be led around, and life has taught me with hard lessons that you get what you give. It’s a karmic law and something I always keep in mind.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering stripped everything away until all that was left was truth.

Success taught me I could win. The accident taught me I could lose everything-my arm, my mobility, my old life- and still choose to get up. It taught me what it feels like to be broken down to mere atoms, to be nothing but pain and breath, but I still decided that my story isn’t over.

Success gives you confidence. Suffering gives you proof that you’re unbreakable, because you’ve already been shattered but you keep going.

I pull inspiration from everywhere, but one line I carry close is from Malcolm X in a 1964 interview:

“I’m a man who believes that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.”

(1964–1965 interviews, Malcolm X, ((El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
))

There’s more I could say, but at the root it’s simple: everything I do now is about laying down something solid for the next ones to stand on, to write their own truths on top of. My suffering, my loss-I want it to turn into water that feeds somebody else’s growth. That’s the only way any of this makes sense. We create the meaning from our pain. We can choose to let the pain pull us down deeper into despair, or we can use the pain as a challenge to grow from, to test ourselves against, and to ultimately overcome.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a cultural value you protect at all costs?
A cultural value I protect at all costs is community. Community begins with family-blood or chosen, without that we truly have nothing. There’s something to be said about those who with integrity work to strengthen and broaden community and communal action. What this looks like varies person to person, but every once of effort counts.

At the heart of it, I really do believe that we need to stop seeing each other for our differences and focus on our similarities. Right now, we’re holding everything under a microscope but I feel like we’re missing the bigger picture, which is the truth that we are all living together on a singular planet that’s rotating around the Sun in the vastness of space. We only got one shot at this, and our fate remains undetermined.

For life to continue we need to relearn what it means to be cooperative, to be generous, to be kind. We need to relearn what it means to walk a noble path, to have a backbone, and live a righteous life. There seems to be very little of that left, however, I know it is possible for the community and culture to change.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I want it quiet, but true.
When I’m gone, I hope they say that I never let the pain write the last line.

That even when half my body was screaming and the other half was gone, when I was still stuck in that wheelchair staring at a future I didn’t recognize, I still brought myself to the canvas every morning and painted like the world still needed proof it could be beautiful.

Tell them the pain never left. Not once.
But I learned to sit inside it like it was a storm and I was the eye-quiet and unmoving-letting the storm rage until it ran out of wind.

Say I laughed too loud, loved too hard, and spent every last drop I had trying to make the path behind me a little softer for whoever comes next.

Mostly, I hope they say that I kept the door open. Every time life tore at me, I turned the wound into a window and let the light spill out for anybody still trapped in the dark.

When it’s over, let the whole story fit in one breath:
Even though it tore me apart, I left more love in the world than pain

That’s it.
That’s enough.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.coreylarue.art
• Instagram: @corey_la_rue