Texas plates don't hate, showing up in the state...
Houston
Houston, TX USA
“I paint how the city feels at midnight — when it's too late for lies and too early for healing. My art is what truth looks like through cracked mirrors and wet concrete.”
Corey Haynes
Artist | Storyteller | Vision Architect
Collections by Corey
Where soul meets surface. Where light bends through struggle. Where Hip-Hop poetry lives in pigment.
Based in Houston, Texas, Corey Haynes is the visionary artist behind Collections by Corey, a bold and emotionally charged body of work rooted in storytelling, symbolism, and the sacred power of the Black urban experience. His current series, “Rainy Nights, City Lights,” captures the tension between chaos and clarity — reflecting the beautiful mess of resilience, reflection, and rising through the storm.
Each piece is a cinematic still: rain-slicked streets, neon dreams, refracted memory — rendered in oil pastels, chalk, colored pencils, paint pens, and textured with mirror, broken glass, and palette knife technique. These works are not just painted — they’re carved, sliced, and resurrected with tools that echo the tension in their subject matter.
My work explores the intersection of vulnerability and vibrance — moments of stillness inside a storm. I use mixed media and urban materials to reflect not only light, but lived experience. Through broken mirror shards and pigment, I build portraits of cities and people learning how to shine through what tried to shatter them.
The Rainy Nights, City Lights series was born from personal moments of introspection, nights driving through Houston, and the soundtrack of my life — Hip-Hop, gospel, jazz, and silence. The wet streets represent memory. The city lights? Hope that refuses to die.
Press & Exhibitions
https://youtu.be/YvnkuNpj-40?si=56-CDWN-iNpEWwgK
Featured Artist, Bisong Art Gallery (Houston, TX)
Sold-Out Work, “Aysha” painting acquired by private collector
Artist Talk Guest, Black Art Conversations
Spotlight Feature, 2LOUD Magazine
Panelist, Art + Culture & Commerce (Houston Creatives Roundtable)
Exhibited at: Houston Art Crawl,
Texas plates don't hate, showing up in the state...