Carson Collins

I've been working on The Ocean Series for more than a quarter of a century. I guess you could say that this conflation of a traditional marine sunset with a color-field painting, something that originally crossed my mind sometime back in 1978, has turned out to be a fairly fertile idea for me. Call it a Remodernist approach to the color-field tradition if you like, but I'm not trying to deconstruct anything, fit into any category, or prove any theories. The ocean, with its infinite variety and constant flux, is a motif that never ceases to fascinate me; and to say that this image of the far horizon and the dying sunlight has broad metaphoric powers would be to belabor the obvious. My two greatest influences as a painter have been Mark Rothko and Claude Monet; in a way, my paintings are only a kind of simple-minded formal synthesis of the two. At least, I hope they're that good.

Once in a while a commercial gallery will invite me to do an exhibition. My first solo was at Sarah Rentschler Gallery, NYC, in 1980. The most recent one (as of this writing) was January 2003 at Sekanina Contemporary Art Gallery in Ferrara, Italy. I had a good show at Norro Gruppen Konstgallerie, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1991. In between there were about a dozen others, spread out over the past 20 years; but seldom in the same place twice...

Its been a lonely path. I'm nomadic, never stay in one place for more than a year or two; don't have any possessions except for what I can carry on the iron birds. So far I've lived in 7 of the USA States and 6 other countries. I prefer warm places, but anywhere with a left coast will do - for a while. Of course I always have to be near the motif. Yet I don't like painting outdoors. I often work in buildings that have been, for one reason or another, abandoned. I can't seem to paint effectively for more than about 4 hours a day. The rest of the time I mostly spend walking or sitting on the beach, staring at the ocean. I meditate. I surf when I can. I take part-time work when its available; have had quite a variety of dead-end, no-brainer jobs, some of which I liked. I've got an MD degree from the University of Texas that I've chosen to ignore. You might also say that I have the equivalent of a PhD in "coping".

Looking at a work of art affects us in a positive, a negative, or (rarely) a neutral way. This is obvious: Look at the image, not just a glance, spend some time at it. Notice how you feel. My intention in making them was to create a meditative ambiance: a profound and lucid calm. Enter the illusion. You are the figure that inhabits this eternal place. Notice how you feel. Some viewers have found them evocative.

I was introduced to Carson Collins over a year ago while observing art online. Mr. Collins is a very devoted painter and he has many interesting stories.

Carson has been working on The Ocean Series for more than a quarter of a century. This body of work reveals the work ethic of Mr. Collins. It is rare to find an artist so devoted to a theme.

Brian Sherwin: Carson, the subject of your art is the four elements in their most majestic setting - the shoreline. Your images have captured aspects of earth, air, fire, and water. Why have you had such a strong focus on these themes? Do you feel that painters should share this same focus in their work or is it more of an issue of personal choice?

Carson Collins: I guess you could say that this conflation of a traditional marine sunset with a color-field painting, something that originally crossed my mind sometime back in 1977, has turned out to be a fairly fertile idea for me. Call it a Remodernist approach to the color-field tradition if you like, but I'm not trying to deconstruct anything, fit into any category, or prove any theories.

BS: Do you plan to work on the Ocean Series until the day you die?

CC: I don't make any plans to speak of; I kicked the hope habit long ago. There's no tomorrow. So far, the motif continues to fascinate me, as it has for the past thirty years.

BS: I understand that you have traveled the world and that you have lived in many places. How do the customs and experiences you have faced during your travels influenced your painting? Do you consider yourself a vagabond? If so, is that reflected in your work? It seems, based on your work, that you are a man who seeks new horizons- both physically and mentally.

CC: I've lived and worked, for a year or more, in 7 of the USA States and 6 other countries, not to mention the ones I've visited. In my experience, the problems for an artist are the same in any country: poverty, and the fact that very few people are ever going to understand or appreciate what you're doing.

Am I a "vagabond"? I've done a fair amount of traveling without ever having had any capital to speak of, if that's what you mean. But I'm past my prime. That sort of thing was a lot easier for me at 25 than it was at 52. I was born in 1953.

I confess that I am much inclined to travel. "No horizon too far." It’s arguably the best form of education. I intend to go to Tierra del Fuego some day soon. The atmospheric light and the ocean wave forms there must be something truly amazing. There's a legend about an ancient stone ruin down there that glows in the dark, and my friend (physician and poet) Chris Horak and I intend (in the usual way of aging adventurers) to find it.

BS: Carson, one of your major influences has been the art of Claude Monet. What connections to his work have you striven to create within the context of your own work. Do you share some of his philosophy about artistic creation? If so, can you go into further detail about that?

CC: Monet, in my opinion, was the greatest painter that ever walked the earth. He wasn't much of a philosopher. His last series, the water lilies, are transcendent. Visit the Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens in central Paris if you can. Sit down on the little bench and let one of these grand, astonishing works surround and dissolve you.

BS: When I first observed your work- about a year ago- I noted that there seemed to be a trace of Mark Rothko in your paintings. Is Rothko an influence? Have you ever visited the Rothko Chapel?

CC: I walked into the Chapel (on the campus of Rice University in Houston, TX) one day in 1974, expecting to find less than nothing; just another high art hoax. My reaction was both overwhelming and totally unexpected. I literally wept, much as I also did years later when I saw the Van Goghs in Munich. Rothko was a genius and a tragic hero; he sought and achieved the expression of an authentic personal spirituality within the then- dominant idiom of Ab-Ex. I don't think there's one famous painter living today who's worth the shit on the bottom of Mark Rothko's shoes.

BS: I'm not sure why, but when I view your paintings I think of the Iliad and other classic texts. I'm assuming that you are well-read since your work conveys that... at least to me.

CC: Perhaps the thing that gives you this impression is a quality of timelessness, which is inherent in my subject matter as well as in my rendering of it.

Here's something Robert Wallis said about my painting, Et In Arcadia Ego: "The late afternoons in Arcadia are never ending where time comes to a standstill. The waves move but the pattern has no end, and the mind seizes on nothingness and holds it. The colors evoke a sense of all-enveloping warmth that reinforces the idea of finding the magic moment within. The time will come to step away from the picture, but it becomes embedded in the mind's eye. With a moment of stillness it will return, and the peace will return. The sadness is knowing that Arcadia is a place to visit, and that happiness by it's nature requires a contrast to give it value. That's why we can't stay there."

The ocean is ever-changing. Observe it closely, its forms and colors are in constant flux, it’s never still, you cannot exhaust its infinite variety. And yet, it is always and profoundly the same; the ocean symbolizes the passage of time and the persistence of memory. To say that this image of the far horizon and the dying sunlight has broad metaphoric powers would be to belabor the obvious.

BS: I'd love to hear more of your stories.

CC: Here’s one that might be of some general interest: I knew Joe Glasco from 1973 until 1982. After that I never saw him again; I learned of his death when I saw Julian Schnabel's film, Basquiat, on TV in 1998. (As you may know, the film is dedicated to Joe and he is a player in two of the scenes.) My relationship with Joe was intimate, complex, and problematic, but for purposes of this story let's just say that I was Joe's friend and Julian Schnabel was also Joe's friend.

One evening in 1980 Joe got a 'phone call from Julian, who was distraught because the fashion model he had been dating (I can't remember her name) had dumped him, and he had an opening at Mary Boone's gallery in a couple of days. He didn't have enough work ready for the show and was too upset, he said, to work... Joe and I went over to his place. Julian made us dinner (spaghetti with peanut butter sauce). It was a mess; the man was hysterical.

Anyway there were these four little collage drawings sitting on the mantle and Julian was too upset to finish them. Joe suggested that Julian should let me finish the "drawings"- which had pictures of architectural elements and statuary that had been ripped out of old magazines glued on - because, "he has a good eye", as Joe put it. I applied myself to the task while Joe and Julian sat in the kitchen over wine and reefers (Joe was an alcoholic who never drank but he liked to smoke pot). There was a pile of old magazines, glue, and assorted pencils and paints...

When I had finished the drawings to my satisfaction I went back into the kitchen and said, "they're done." Joe and Julian came out and had a look. "Are they really finished?" asked Julian. Joe thought about it for maybe 5 seconds and said. "Yes." Julian smiled through his tears. "Great", he said "That's twenty thousand dollars." I wasn't offered a percentage... but, I will say this for Julian: He was sincere about being insincere.

I met Basquiat in 1979. I was coming home around dawn and there he was, tagging the building that I lived in at 100 Greene St. He was writing SAMO SAMO SAMO SAMO SAMO SAMO all over the place with a can of white spray paint, as he had been doing to everything within reach, in SoHo, for months. I politely said good morning (because he was blocking my door) and asked if he couldn't do us all a favor and maybe use some different colors once in a while, or at least write something else for a little variety. He replied with a rather common racial epithet that I won't repeat here. I didn't think much of him then, and I don't think much of his paintings today.

I have met Mary Boone and been to events in her gallery. I was 26 years old when I met her and I'm not aware of her opinions having influenced me even then. Let's just say that I was not favorably impressed, to put it mildly.

I don't know how Mary Boone or the late Leo Castelli or any of these art-star makers decided who they were going to push. There are probably any number of personal factors involved in each individual case. It doesn't strike me that the process is particularly organized or guided by any grand principle other than the fact that the public doesn't know anything about art and never will.

There must be a thrill that they get from the knowledge that they have the power to take any junkie off the street and make him an art star, and of course there's money to be made.

What I'm trying to get at is that I was a part of that scene and witnessed the rise of both Basquiat and Schnabel, and I don't really think there was anything much to be learned there, apart from some trivia about the players and a few amusing stories.

I think fame and material success for an artist is almost entirely a matter of luck: being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people, being capable of sucking up to them in a way that they find gratifying, and having whatever kind of art you are predisposed to make coincide with an existing trend.

On reflection, there's something else that probably should be said here, even though it might appear so obvious as to be not worth mentioning: The reason that Mary Boone helped Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat was because she liked them and liked their work. Further, they were artists who were in step with the fashions of the day, and thus were relatively easy to sell. I really don't think there was anything particularly sinister about it.

BS: What is this conflict you had with David Cohen (art critic for the New York Sun)?

CC: There was never any conflict; quite the opposite. I read his article, "Ambiguity and Intention", published at the Online Symposium on Art and Cognition organized by Noga Arikha and Gloria Origgi in January 2003, and posted at interdisciplines.org Some of the things David said were thought-provoking (in a disturbing sort of way), and I sent him an email expressing some of my contrasting views on the subject. He replied, and we had a dialog that Mr. Cohen found sufficiently interesting to publish in the September, 2003 issue of his e-zine, "Art Critical."

I confess that logic is a subject that fascinates me almost as much as painting, and I genuinely enjoy discussions involving inference (a.k.a. arguments) about art.

BS: How have things changed since the 70's and 80's as far as the art world is concerned... is it too corporate now? Do you think younger artists are being exploited more than ever?

CC: So far as I have observed in my lifetime, nothing ever really changes in the art world. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

BS: How did Schnabel and Basquiat act towards others who did not 'make it' once they became huge?

CC: Basquiat and I took an instant dislike to each other. Schnabel was never really a friend of mine, he was Joe Glasco's friend, and whatever connection I had with him ended when Joe and I parted ways; since I was never a friend of either one, I really don't know the answer to your question.

BS: So tell me more about your experiences... who you've met... the countries you've been to. The influences you've had.

CC: I've lived in the Bahamas, St.Barthelemy, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Mauritius. The two most interesting encounters I’ve had with famous people were George Harrison and Timothy Leary. I did a light show for the immortal musical genius, Jimi Hendrix, at Curtis-Hixon Hall (Tampa,FL) in 1968, but he only said a few words to me. I was all of 15 years old at the time. I remember thinking, "Jesus-take-me-now!" He was my big hero then. Still is, as a matter of fact...

By far the greatest influence on my life has been Vipassana Buddhism, specifically the practice of meditation on the breath, and Metta (Universal Love), as taught to me by a truly extraordinary man, John Travis. John is the real thing; he’s part of a handful of people who brought this spiritual technology to the West. Vipassana wasn’t taught outside of monasteries until the late 1980s. Anyone who’s interested can learn more about John and Vipassana at his web site, MtStream.org By the way, be forewarned; it’s not for the faint-of-heart.

BS: Tell me more about meeting George Harrison and Timothy Leary. Did they have an impact on your art?

CC: Not directly. George Harrison was an enormous influence on me (and a whole lot of other people) because of his role in popularizing Transcendental Meditation. I began the practice of meditation and eventually became a Buddhist largely because of something George Harrison did by promoting the Hindu teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, at the height of the Beatles' fame and fortune.

My meeting with Mr. Harrison was completely accidental; I met him in a French restaurant in a very out-of-the-way place. He was dining alone, and I approached his table to pay my respects to him. He was extremely gracious, invited me to sit down and have a glass of wine. I was a little drunk.

The thing I remember most about him was that he was profoundly sad, and, it seemed to me, lonely. I remember feeling angry at the thought that this man, who was something of a hero in my mind, did not seem to enjoy his advantages as much as I would have wished him to.

I met Dr. Leary in a Japanese restaurant in NYC; came out of the restroom and suddenly there he was, making a telephone call. I normally don't annoy celebrities but for some reason I felt compelled to speak to him. I thought he was an important man who had shown the courage ofhis convictions, a sort of contemporary intellectual martyr.

He was a tenured psychology professor at Harvard who was fired and subsequently put in prison, you know. The discovery of LSD will one day be seen as the important milestone in human evolution that Tim believed it to be.

Anyone who wants to know the real story should read "Storming Heaven; LSD and theAmerican Dream" by Jay Stevens. Anyhow, Tim gave me his telephone number. A few months later he was a guest in my house. He was a wonderfully amusing man; incredibly energetic and young at heart; unpretentious, just a whole lot of fun to be with. He was a sort of Holy Fool. When he smiled, all of the colors got brighter. I consider it a great honor to have known him, however briefly.

BS: So due to your interest in Vipassana, would you say that your work is an expression of your spirituality? Do find some form of redemption or solace in your work?

CC: Yes, absolutely. The central theme in my painting is the search for stillness, the sort of profound and lucid calm that is the result of meditation or contemplation; another main theme is the relationship between humans, the ocean, and the atmosphere. The intent of my work is to create an ambiance where the spiritual dimension of this relationship can be experienced.

BS: Can you discuss your relationship with Joe Glasco? How did he impact your art?

CC: Joe Glasco influenced me more than any other artist. I had been drafted, and was enrolled in medical school at UTMB, Galveston. The year was 1973. It was called a 2-M deferment; I was supposed to go to Viet Nam as an Army Surgical Officer in one of those M.A.S.H. units after I graduated. President Nixon pulled the plug on the war while I was still in school, so I never actually went over there.

Joe Glasco had a studio in Galveston at that time, in an old cotton warehouse on Strand Ave. Anyway, I met Joe when I was a student, 19 or 20 years old, and he was in his early 50s; about the same age as I am now, come to think of it. Joe was quite a colorful character: he had once been the youngest man ever to be shown in the New York MOMA, had been one of Jackson Pollock’s drinking buddies, etc.

Joe and I had the sort of relationship that Oscar Wilde famously referred to as "The Love that Dares Not Speak it's Name." It lasted for about 9 years, off and on. It was problematic, because Joe was gay and I wasn't, really. But I was broad minded and narcissistic enough to be capable of that sort of gender-bending (up to a point), and bisexuality was quite fashionable in those days.

Anyway Joe and I fell in love with each other; so much so that, for a while, it didn't seem to matter what kind of plumbing we had. Of course the relationship was doomed from the start.

Joe was the only actual living role-model I ever had for being an artist. He gave me an art education that couldn't have been bought, not for any price. He could have done a lot more. I have one of his paintings hanging in my studio, and I've often raised a glass to it and said,"Here's to Joe Glasco, who could have given me the World, and didn't." But I've no doubt that his intentions were good. He didn't think I was ready, and he was probably right. It's my misfortune that Joe died when he did, but Death is no respecter of our little plans, is he? He comes whenever he wants to.

Joe didn't have much to say about painting, but he taught me just about everything I know about being a painter, which is an entirely disparate skill. I sure do miss that mean old queer. I think about him often.

His work is largely forgotten at this point in time, and undeservedly so; some of his last paintings really are amazingly good. I believe the largest and best collection of his late work is in the Fred Jones Museum at Oklahoma University.

BS: So would you say that your paintings are the place you want to go when you pass? Are they a reflection of the kind of balance you would desire in the hereafter?

CC: I don't believe in any kind of hereafter. Now is all there is.

BS: When did you first decide to pick up the brush?

CC: I had a very severe illness when I was seven years old; was in a coma for a few days, and it was not at all certain that I would survive. There was brain damage; when I recovered I had temporarily lost my hearing. It didn't fully come back for six months.

At that time I suddenly developed the ability to draw and paint with a facility, an accuracy, a compositional sense, and a strange, coherent, plunging perspective; something that was astonishing in a child of that age. I started painting then and I'm still at it.

My mother had an MFA and an M Ed, and she taught me the basics. I also read Irving Stone's biography of Van Gogh around that time, and the V

The Littoralist Paintings of Carson Collins

The Painter
It is evident when engaged in conversation with the painter Carson Collins that one is discussing issues with a warm and literate man. The subject of his art is the four elements in their most majestic setting - the shoreline: earth, air, fire, and water. The artist has at one and the same time an ebullient nature and the ‘gravitas’ of original introspection. Tall and of large trim frame, his bearing strikes one as being in stark contrast to the fragile glazed surfaces and delicate analogous tonalities of color to be seen in his seascape paintings.
Of his personal history he will tell you that he is of Irish and Cherokee ancestry and that he was born on the 25th November 1953 in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the family relocating to Longboat Key Florida in 1958. With pride he will describe his mother who holds a Masters degree in art education and who home schooled her son in the techniques of painting in oil and water color before he was ten years old.
When reminiscing about his father, his speech slows down, his eyes narrow, and his large frame becomes restive and curved. He will tell you that his father received a full disability pension from the army, after which he became a lawyer, who due to his severe injuries in WW II remained mentally in that conflict for the rest of his life.
As for the artist himself, the Vietnam war affected his life. The fact that he had been drafted interrupted his plans to study art at university and redirected for a brief time his artistic ambitions to those of medicine. After high school, Collins received B.A. degrees in psychology and chemistry at the University of South Florida at Tampa in 1973. Four years later he received his M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “I never did my internship but in 1978 quit allopathic practice in order to concentrate on painting full-time.”
A passionate traveller, he has since painted in Mauritius in view of the Indian Ocean, the Stockholm Archipellago in the Baltic Sea, St. Barthelemy in the West Indes, Honolulu, Manhattan and most recently, Costa Rica, Central America. Throughout his travels the relationship of the sky to the sea in his “Ocean Series” has been the central motif of his painting. The first paintings of The Ocean Series began on St. Barthelemy in 1978, the concept being a focused space into which his mythopoeic imagination has poured its colors.
In a more precise and unconcious way, this singularity of motif reflects a truism of all serious painting, that the choice of subject attempts to resolve the psychological dynamics of the artist’s philosophical preferences. In the case of Collins, this dynamic must also include his wanderlust. His art is a sincere and authentic objectification of his response to this dynamic and the emotional paradigms that ensue. His seascapes are delicately painted and deceptively reductive paens to littoral patterns; used to sublimate anxiety and to celebrate self-renewal in equal measure.

The Paintings

A formal analysis of Collins’ paintings must be predicated on an “a priori” analytical distinction. In Western art two different, though inclusive, intentions exist. The first is to define an art that wills its way through the eyes into the heart. Such art is called retinal art. The second wills its way into the mind. Such art is called non-retinal art. All art has both intentions at play. The issue of degree and dominance of one over the other is a variable, due to historical period and the artist’s essence. Whether the art is retinal or non-retinal, the artist’s intention is to give depth to the emotional experience of the observer. What differs is emphasis! Expressionist art relies as much on experience as it does subject matter, whereas various forms of classicism tend toward etherial concepts of timeless forms. Such art addresses pure concepts in abstract uses of line and color. The idiosyncracies of the artist are de-emphasized in the service of classic restraint.
Collins’ paintings’ poetic feel is in large part due to the fluid transparency between these two positions. His color and brushstroke devices have precedent in the paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851). For example the vortex of white, yellow, and orange in Turner’s “Light and Color” 1843 (Tate Gallery, London) in which Turner utilizes the color theories of the German poet Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832), wherein red is at the top and green at the bottom of the poet’s chromatic circle. Collins is in many ways a spiritual descendant of this emperical romantic approach to color. Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) the French Impressionist painter living in London during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 - 71, accompanied by fellow artist Camille Pissarro (1830 - 1903), came into contact with Turner’s paintings. Although this introduction shows no clear sign of influence on the Frenchman, other than an appreciation for fluid blends of color, one does see in the case of Monet an appreciation for subsuming subject matter to the act of painting as a thing in itself. Such can be traced back to examples of early 19th century English landscape painting. Indeed in a letter to Wynford Dewhurst (Nov. 1902) Pissarro writes,”The watercolors and painting of Turner and Constable, the canvasses of Old Chrome, have certainly had an influence on us.” (1)
This is the organic and romantic aspect of Collins’ art. However, the geometrical structure and close attention to analogous color, heightened by the use of a split-complimentary, can be closely related to the theories of American ( German - born) Bauhaus painter Joseph Albers (1888 - 1976) whose famous series of paintings and lithographs based on the square exploited subtle chromatic harmonies. Jack Burnham has noted, “In all of his (Albers’) “Homage to the Square” series, variables are reduced to one color relationship. The “art” of Albers’ paintings stem from two criteria. Its compositional symplicity through concentric squares relates it to the field paintings of Barnett Newman (1905 - 70), Mark Rothko (1903 -70), and Kenneth Noland (1924 - ).”
These painters have a “formal similarity” which “ is a lack of asymmetrical, unbalanced forms operating in both dimensions of the painting”. (2) Collins’ utilization of the rectangle in the square - the divisions of the painting between sky and ocean, with the horizon line as the base of the square - is a continuation of the tradition of Albers and the painters that came after him. With Collins, however, the musical interval of the surf is a breaking out of of the square’s solid frontal presence. It introduces a new approach to the color field tradition of two directional movements across and through a painting’s picture plane.
Again within this image and emphasis on retinal art, Collins’ painting is the simultaneously reflective and transparent surface of the water and has connection to Monet, the “Nympheas” of 1916 - 1919 (Musee de l’Orangerie, Paris) best known as the famous water lillies. As Collins has pointed out, it is these late paintings of the master that have deeply influenced his own work. Monet’s ability to convey the pond’s depth, the sky and the lillies simultaneously is carried over into collins’ painting as the mirror image of the sun dissolving into and reflected on the ocean. The surf (like Monet’s water lillies) establishes the lucid plane of the water, and the surf’s intervals, between rising and falling, is similar to Monet’s placement of floating flowers.

(1) “The Chronicle of Impressions” - Bernard Devenir, Pg. 71
Blufinch press (Little, Brown & Co.) 1993

(2) “The Structure of Art - Jack Burnham, Pg. 50 George Brazilier 1971


Technique

Collins’ methodology in creating his “Ocean Series” has been consistent since his first canvas on the subject. To begin, he builds up the surface either through a liquid acrylic polymer medium in which are suspended titanium oxide coated mica flakes or through pure colors blended with the use of a similar acrylic medium. Both approaches extend the pigment colors and allow for infinitesimal hue value changes over a large, seemingly flat, field of color. This technique emphasizes translucency, depth, and luminosity.
The blending of colors begins with an overall unifying color, applied with a wallpaper hanger’s brush made of China bristle. This prime color establishes the mood of the painting; the mood of the situation before the observer. It is the key hue of an adjacent series of analogous colors. This blend is applied as horizontal stripes that are then fused into a seamless chromatic sequence. Over this a blend of split complimentary colors, based on the prime color, are added as a focal interest in the surf and modulations of sky patterns. In some paintings two sets of prime color and a corresponding split complimentary are used.

The Psychology of the Artist as it relates to his Paintings

Collins will tell you of his preference to work in a studio where the dominant light source comes from the west. He conceives his seascapes as having a western horizon. This meditation on a setting sun is ancient and universal. It combines the internal space of our oneness with the universe with the recognition of our own mutability. At the seashore, man’s receptivity to and need for the ocean is at once symbolic of our connection with the mother and physiological in our connection to it. We have the same proportion of salt in our blood as salt to water in the world’s oceans. The circularity of the moon’s cycles and their conjunction with the height of the tides not only connects us with the mother symbol of the ocean, but also the notion of “the divine” in the curving mass of the horizon as one place on the sphere on which we live. “The wheel may lead our thoughts toward the concept of a “divine” sun, but at this point reason must admit its incompetence; man is unable to define a divine being.” (3) Unable to define the divine, man has created the specialist in tribal ritual whose practices symbolize an intuition of such without defining it. These individuals, through sympathetic magick along with incantations, dance, and potions must call up the spirit of the divine through images that illustrate the concept. The power to do so is the power of the Shaman of pre-industrial society. The artist of our own information age is our cultural Shaman.

(3) “Man and His Symbols” - Carl Jung, Pg. 4 (Introduction) Dell Publishing
1964

Collins’ paintings in one sense are incantations to an idealized father descending below the horizon, or body, of an equally idealized mother. In the western world gold and yellow often refer to a firey intellect, self-discipline and detachment - the sun. Blue is a spiritual color, related to the clarity and coolness of intellect, chastity, eternal happiness, peace and emotions - the ocean. This idealization is abstracted as a circle within a square. The sun is never seen as such in the paintings but implied through the reflection of sky into ocean.The horizon is the base of the square, the top edge of the canvas being the upper edge, the right and left vertical edges completing it. The paintings have about them a sense of the Mandala, a symbol of meditation or contemplation in the Buddist and Hindu religions. In these religious images it is represented by a square within a circle. Collins in his paintings has reversed this configuration.
Collins will tell you he intends the observer of his paintings “to experience a mutual mental and physical beneficial result”. This is a painter who, not having a religious intention in his work, correctly asserts a spiritual one. The sky, ocean, and sun are, therefore, ancient remnants within his subconcious. The paintings are the products of archetypal dynamics within his psyche. Primarily here the universal concept of the “divine” nature of a square within a circle is reversed for the purposes of a seascape. Jungian psychoanalytic thinking illuminates another aspect of this configuration. “Abstract mandalas also appear in European Christian art. Some of the most splendid examples are the rose windows in cathedrals. These are representations of man transposed onto the cosmic plane.” (4) The ceilings of religious architecture are another example.
One of the most striking uses of the mandala is in dome architecture, Islamic and Christian. “The square represents the earth held in fourfold embrace by the circular vault of the sky and hence subject to the ever-flowing wheel of time. When the incessant movement of the universe, depicted by the circle, yields to comprehensible order, one finds the square. The square then presupposes the circle and results from it. The relationship of form and movement, of space and time, is evoked by the mandala.” (5)
The division of the painting established by the horizon line of the ocean approximates a square. This shape at once contains and radiates the power of the circle. Deep within Western conciousness is a symbolic geometry that extends itself into emperical science. Geometry from its beginning had this dual function.

(4) “Man and His Symbols” - Aniela Jaffe “Symbolism in the Visual Arts, Pg. 268
(5) “Sacred Geometry” - Robert Lawlor, Pg. 16. Thames and Hudson 1982

The French ecclesiastic Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 - 1153), founder and abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Clairvaux observed, “What is God? He is length, width, height, and depth.” (6) All these allusions are contained in Collins’ paintings. This point is further demonstrated in his reference to the Greek concept of the Golden Section: the only ratio that is also a proportion. This geometry is not strictly enforced in the paintings, but is in evidence as an intention. Euclid, the Alexandrian mathematician in his “Elements”, Bk. 6, Prop 3 defines it as, “A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less.” In Collins’ seascapes, the sky and ocean is to the sky as the sky is to the ocean. In algebra it may be expressed as a:b::b:(a+b). Since antiquity the Golden Section has had mystical meaning in art and science. The Renaissance teacher of sacred geometry, Fra Luca Pacioli (c 1445 - 1515) advised his students to concentrate on the transparent solids as a discipline to assist in the comprehension of the metaphysical realities supporting all appearances.
The filial dimension of the paintings is equally rich in information, The painter’s father, the “paterfamilias” of Christian tradition, has achieved through the artist’s transference of his twofold emotions toward him, respect and pity, a new expression of the Sun God motif.
The combat veteran of WW II, destined to be a pained and injured being, raises classic issues of Oedipal conflict and parricide within his son. The sun in the paintings is both death and resurrection. The respect the painter has for his late father stems not only from natural love, but also from the brutal circumstances of his infirmity. But parricidal impulses, normal in all people toward their parents, are further engendered by a wish to end his father’s suffering. Each painting resurrects the father in the artist’s psyche. In the painter’s imagination the sun, once set in a finished work, will rise again in the first energies of the next, to set again and so on. During his life the artist was forever aware that his father was in the “twilight of life”, suffering in spite of medication.
The father is nonetheless revered above, in the paintings, forever curving down to the horizon. The painter’s mother provided her son with the tools and techniques to ritualize this sublimation into art. A painter herself, the pigment and brushes achieve metamorphosis into unconcious mythopoeic activity within the painter as magick gifts to achieve this sublimation. As a protection like the magick sword given by Athena to kill Medusa (death), the artist’s mother (wisdom) is also the stable earth around which the sun moves. She, too, is the curving ocean upon which the sun reflects its numbing power. It is important to reflect that the specific location of the sun, but not the ocean, is ambivalent in these paintings. The square of the sky has many symbolic meanings. Of the many possible associations the most relevant here are the elements, parts of the world, and temperaments.

(6) “On Consideration” - Bernard of Clairvaux

The painter has remarked on the transcendental nature “of the intense colors at sunset, due to the acute angle of the sun”, and, “The ocean is the source of all rivers - a metaphor of death and reincarnation.” He is guided by the evocative idea of transmutation of the viewer’s physical space into the illusionistic space of the painting, where the boundary between the seen and the unseen that a mandala intends to dissolve is achieved by the quiet luminosity of the image.
Each painting is a celebration of renewal coming to its end before it begins again. A celebration of knowing the father and praising the knowledge gained from the mother. Like Hamlet, Collins is in conversation with the ghost of his father on the crenelated architecture of his memories. Through his gift he is absorbed in a reconciliation of love and understanding (Eros) with the consequence upon himself of war’s betrayal (Thanatos). These are mandalas for the Western mind in which all memories - good and bad - are unified and cleansed in the heat of intelligence and the cooling waters of emotion.

Kevin Costello 1999

Sarah Rentschler Gallery, NYC USA, 1980
Norrogruppen Konstgallerie, Stockholm Sweden, 1991
Hodgell Gallery, Sarasota FL USA, 1994
Sekanina Contemporary Art, Ferrara Italy 2003