Colin Goldberg (born 1971, Bronx, New York) is an American artist who layers painting, digital drawing and augmented reality into single works. He coined the term Techspressionism in 2011 as the title of a solo exhibition, naming an approach in which technology is used as a means to express emotional experience. In 2020 he established an artist group around the idea, which has grown into an international movement of artists working with technology from more than 50 countries. Techspressionist exhibitions have since been held in New York, Los Angeles and Tashkent, and in January 2027 the first European exhibition of Techspressionist artworks opens in Paris at Mémoire de l’Avenir. In the summer of 2027, the Cape Cod Museum of Art presents his first solo museum exhibition, Metagraphs: Augmented Reality Art. He lives and works in North Bennington, Vermont.

Background and training

That mix of hand and machine goes back to the start of his career. Goldberg grew up in Southampton, New York. He studied painting at Binghamton University with Angelo Ippolito, a painter of the original New York School, and graduated in 1994, just as the web was taking off. In the late 1990s, working from a small studio on Avenue A in Manhattan’s East Village, he supported himself as a freelance designer and coder in ad agencies and media companies, building some of the earliest websites for brands such as Snapple, Popular Science and Merrill Lynch. At the same time he began using the same design software to make his first abstract digital drawings, which evolved into his Metagraph series of augmented reality artworks. He went on to earn an MFA from Bowling Green State University in 2008.

He also points to a family source: his maternal grandmother, Kimiye Ebisu, was a teacher of Japanese brush calligraphy, and the gestural line of shodō runs through his drawing alongside the energy of Abstract Expressionism. The painter and writer Eric Ernst explored that connection in Hamptons Art Hub.

Process

Goldberg builds his work in layers. A piece often starts as acrylic paint dragged across linen with a taping knife. He then photographs it, redraws it with a stylus in Photoshop and Illustrator, and prints the result back onto the same surface on a 44-inch printer. He may repeat that cycle six or seven times, and each pass answers the one before it. In recent years he has added one more layer that has no physical form: animation and sound in augmented reality, which appear when the finished work is seen through a phone.

Techspressionism

That first solo exhibition was at 4 North Main Gallery in Southampton, New York. In 2014 came a manifesto, a catalog published by Glenn Horowitz with a foreword by Helen A. Harrison, and a Wired article that first called Techspressionism a movement.

Its four founding artists were Colin Goldberg, Oz Van Rosen, Steve Miller and Patrick Lichty, with Helen A. Harrison as advisor. The community’s open online salons have met more than 110 times. Its membership now includes 460 artists, and the #techspressionism hashtag appears on more than 87,000 Instagram posts.

Goldberg curated Techspressionism: Digital and Beyond at Southampton Arts Center in 2022 (also covered by The East Hampton Star). Group exhibitions followed at the Kingsborough Art Museum in Brooklyn (Hello Brooklyn!, 2024), Hudson Guild Gallery in Chelsea (2025) and Chicago’s 150 Media Stream (2025).

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Collections and recognition

His work is held by the Hearst Corporation, whose collection includes Kneeling Icon, installed at Hearst Tower in New York. It is also in the Anne and Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, the Islip Art Museum, Stony Brook University Hospital, the Verostko Center for the Arts. He has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant (2013–14) and a Long Island Creative Individuals grant funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (2013). He was artist-in-residence at The Studios of Key West in 2015, and in 2025 Five Towns College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.

Goldberg is represented by Helmholz Fine Art.

Key facts

Born

1971, Bronx, New York, USA

Lives and works

North Bennington, Vermont

Media

Painting, digital drawing, digital mixed media, augmented reality

Education

BA, Binghamton University (1994); MFA, Bowling Green State University (2008); Honorary DFA, Five Towns College (2025)

Grants and residencies

Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2013–14); NYSCA Long Island Creative Individuals (2013); The Studios of Key West (2015)

Collections

Hearst Corporation; Anne and Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection; Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center; Islip Art Museum; Stony Brook University Hospital; Verostko Center for the Arts

Gallery

Helmholz Fine Art