Christian Cardell Corbet

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Christian Cardell Corbet (born January 31, 1976) is a Canadian painter, sculptor and designer.

Born at Pickering Beach, Ontario, he was raised by his paternal grandparents the late A. J. Corbet III and Alice Charlotte Corbet (née Gould), decendants of a prominent English family from the Guernsey Channel Isles. At a very young age, he developed a strong interest in the fine arts while working with his grandfather on commercial signs. Due to ill health, by the age of 14 he was not able to participate in regular sports like most children his age, so his grandparents strongly encouraged him to paint and sculpt. Being raised on the shores of Lake Ontario he always held a close fascination with water, water formations and its power which to this very day has become a main theme for his paintings.

In 1991, the artist moved to Guelph, Ontario and studied at the University of Guelph. In 1994 he moved to [[Vancouver, British Columbia|Vancouver, British Columbia to open his first studio where he started selling his paintings as an amateur artist. In the spring of 1995 his painting entitled "Elizabeth Holding Her Ribbon" a portrait of the Queen Mother was acquired by the Queen Mother for her private collection. Corbet subsequently presented the portrait at the Queen Mother's private residence at Clarence House, England. At that time he became a professional artist receiving many portrait commissions due to vast international publicity. On March 7, 1997 Corbet founded Canada's first official portrait academy the "Canadian Portrait Academy" which was lauded by Governor General Roméo LeBlanc among many other Canadian notables. During this time he was also exploring abstract and non-objective art and created two large murals for the North Vancouver School Board, largely influenced by his friend and colleague the late Jack Shadbolt. These two murals have since been destroyed.

Working primarily in a realist form, he has made a large body of work depicting "ice themes" namely icebergs, ice floes and pressure ice. These paintings have made him well-known within North America, but it is his finely executed sculptures, in particular art medallions, that he is well-known for. These rare art forms, generally less than ten inches in diameter and created in bronze, wax and mixed media, have brought the artist international acclaim. They have been collected by major art galleries and museums the world over, including some that had previously held no work by Canadian born artists.

From 1996 to 1997 he studied at McMaster University at Hamilton, Ontario in the anatomy laboratories in order to gain greater knowledge of the human form; an exercise which he believes has taught him not only about the human body but also the spiritual aspect of the human as a being. During this time he was a private student of Canadian sculptor Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook, where she introduced the artist to the art medallion.

In 2000, the artist moved back to Ontario to care for his grandmother. There he spent many hours sculpting and painting along the waterfront. It was then that the artist started to study theosophy more and reflected on his iceberg themes in a more spiritual manner. In the same year he founded his private art collection, the "Corbet Collection of Canadian Women Artists" which serves as an educational visual tool to help teach people about the importance of women's roles in Canadian art history. This collection was influenced by the artist's close friendships with many of Canada's more important women artists who saw themselves as having been overshadowed by their male counterparts. In 2003, he had a solo exhibition documenting his ten year retrospective which was well received.

In 2003, Corbet accepted the position of Forensic Artist at the University of Western Ontario where he reconstructed the facial image of a 2,200 year old Egyptian mummy based on CT and laser scans, a first in forensic history. ^{[citation needed]} This work, a life-size sculpture, brought the artist even greater international acclaim and was featured in a two part documentary on the Discovery Channel.

Currently, Corbet continues to develop his iceberg themes as well as work on portrait medallions. As of early 2006 a colossal oil on canvas was created for the international charity World Vision for which he is a patron. He is also known as a mentor to many aspiring artists around the world, freely giving advice and more importantly encouraging their dreams and aspirations in all endeavours of life.

Corbet's recent works include a relief sculpture for the Cumberland County Museum and Archives of R. B. Dickey, which was lauded by the Premier of Nova Scotia Rodney MacDonald. Other recent medallion commissions include Laura Muntz Lyall, William Bauld, and Sir Charles Tupper.

Some of Corbet's more noted subjects include Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Jane Goodall, F. H. Varley, Dorothy Livesay, Jane Addams, Jean Coulthard, George Stanley, Margaret Atwood, Gutzon Borglum, Louis Riel, C. H. Chadderton, Samuel Torrey Orton, William Bauld, and Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook to name only a few. Corbet's works have been collected by over 30 international art galleries and museums and is represented in numerous publications including Canadian Who's Who and Who's Who in Canada.