Thursday, March 31, 2016

Pink Time!

Toward the end of 2015 I had a desire to bring PINK into my work. It began with 01-14-2016 and continued with these two paintings below. The pink idea came from a Jonathan Lasker show at Cheim & Read Gallery in NYC, I saw this one painting by him and it gave me an urge to go pink for a while. When I think about these three paintings, actually two when it comes to actual pink paint, I burnt myself out on pink. Guess it was a culmination of a number of factors, but I won't bother you with that.

02-21-2016
22 X 16IN
Acrylic on Acrylic Yarn on Painted Wood Chassis







02-27-2016
22 X 16IN
Acrylic on Acrylic Yarn on Painted Wood Chassis

This is one of the few paintings I have made with 2 colors of yarn over the chassis. I don't do that much but I always seem to like it's flavor.









As always, click on the images to open them larger.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Blackening the beginning of the new year...

01-14-2016
22 X 16 IN
55.88X40.64 CM
Coal Mixed Acrylic on Acrylic Yarn on Painted Wood Chassis

First painting of 2016, continuing the idea of using Coal from the region I was living in as an additive to the paint. This painting was done quite different from the one in 2015, I only mixed the Coal in with the texture instead of dropping the coal on top of the already painted substrate. I decided the previous painting had so much coal on it that it became a bit of a kitschy visual statement. Too out front instead of subtle which is what I work to accomplish in these paintings, a powerful tension and release, but with subtle associations to dimensionality and the void. Maybe even not with the void, but something much less talked about, the INTERIOR. Since most painters only deal with the surface, and use that to talk about voids, but what I bring to you is a REAL VOID, which I simply refer to as the INTERIOR.
This is one of 4 paintings all begun at the same time, all the same size and scale. They began as a statement on pink, but over time, only three have stayed that way. The fourth is being worked on as I type. Wrapping began today, black over Quin Violet, which is one of my favorite colors, but also one of the colors I very rarely work on. I like it so much I never want to try to overdo it with paintings in that color. White and Black are the two colors I can seem to make 100's of paintings in without getting tired of it, maybe it has to do with what scientists refer to as NON-COLORS. Which I personally think is bullshit, they are born of pigments, which means they ARE colors. They have to be born somewhere.

Thanks! Enjoy the imagery, click the images and they will open much larger, if you save them to your hard drive, they will be saved even larger. Swim in the details.

LONG LIVE THE INTERIOR!!!!!

Jeffrey Collins





Monday, March 14, 2016

Last of 2015

As I remember the ending of 2015. I believe painting wise, it ended on a seriously positive move.

Henceforth........ http://www.jeffreycollins.us/2015.html

Work number 3 in my continued work with the primaries. I love working with red, yellow, and blue, but I don't want a reference to Barnett Newman, even though all my painting colleagues can't help but make the reference. Click on the pics for larger more detailed views. Enjoy!


along with.....




#2 is my first painting I made with crushed coal included in it. The coal came from a friends house in the surrounding Tamaqua area where coal is pretty much everywhere. I felt like doing a few of these types of paintings and this was the first. The first painting from 2016 is also made with that same crushed coal, it's just not as caked on as the above painting. It felt good to have that painting finally done, as it was once finished but the black and white color scheme just didn't work, so I am glad to finally have this one complete. I was originally looking for a silver texture to use as background, but as I was making the silvery paint, it simply wasn't working the way I was making it, so you CAN see a little bit of silvery texture behind all the black, but you really have to get in there and look.