Meet Corey La Rue

We recently connected with Corey La Rue and have shared our conversation below.

Corey, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

My resilience comes from the refusal to concede or give up on myself or my goals.

This stems from my childhood where I did not have a choice or the support to allow myself not to preserve over the obstacles thrown in my way.

I pull from the depths of myself and my inner strength to keep going-even when it looks like the odds are against me, I retain at all times a supreme belief in myself.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am an artist and advocate, living in the Melrose Hill/Hollywood borough of Los Angeles.

Why I love living in Los Angeles, is the amount of creatives and creative energy that the city thrives on.

What makes my artistic practice unique is that I continue to paint in spite of a nearly fatal motorcycle accident that left me disabled and without the use of my former dominant hand and arm.

My painting practice is a form of perseverance, endurance, and resilience that no matter what is thrown at me, my genius cannot be stopped.

After my motorcycle accident, while I was in recovery at Hollywood Presbyterian, I had to relearn how to paint and draw with my left arm and hand, even though that hand had just been reconstructed.

Painting and art making has always been there for me as a way for me to exist and persevere despite my circumstances.

For those who do not know or are not familiar with my story, I started painting while in a continuation high school in a drug gang rehabilitation program for at risk youth.

It was through this program that I found my voice and through this program that led me ultimately to UC Davis for my BA and later to Boston University for my MFA, much later in life I also earned my Masters in Professional Studies from MICA in the Business of Art and Design.

All this came from my love of painting and love of the arts.

My love for the arts has helped me curate shows for a business venture, I started with my wife called Gallery Mariposa, Los Angeles. The gallery is functioning as a pop-up location at this time, but we are always looking for people to include in our shows and ideas to make them continuously unique.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Without discipline, consistency, and time in what you want to do with your life, nothing is possible.

It’s taken me years to get to where I am now, and even so I’m not finished yet.

What I learned young is that without a daily habit or daily practice with your goals in mind-you’ll never accomplish what you’ve set out to do.

Naturally, this implies that for success and for a successful life you must sincerely work for yourself-as best as you can, always believing.

You must have supreme focus and dedication to your passions and dreams in order for them to materialize and become beneficial. It doesn’t matter if you were born into wealth or not-what you desire you can achieve if you give those desires the correct amount of time and energy.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

The number one challenge, I am currently facing is my body and overall health.

At this moment, as I am writing this I am still in recovery from a long and invasive surgery that I underwent in order to regain some function of my right arm and hand. It has been a painful road one wrought with adversity and challenges wherever I look. I live in constant chronic and severe pain-with paralysis still on the right side of my body unable to function as a body should.

But what I do so that I preserve and overcome without succumbing to the pressures and pain in my life is that I focus and I dig deep into my innermost strength, pulling from the resources that I have placed there long ago- in order to continue to paint while remaining a supportive husband and an advocate for my community.

It is my hope that those who read about me and my story, will they themselves be encouraged to dream beyond their limitations of what they think is possible, reaching forward to the impossible so that their hopes are actualized in their own lives, for the benefit of themselves and for those around them.

❤️ u LA

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @corey_la_rue

Image Credits

Photos by Corey La Rue, Los Angeles