Michael Roque Collins is internationally regarded as a remarkably innovative contemporary romantic expressionist painter who has been making extraordinary narrative paintings of infinite exuberance, artistic vision, and profound intensity over a career that has spanned more than 40 years. His work uniquely plumbs the depths of human existence and the mysteries that abound within it, embracing the inevitable ambiguity and uncertainty of the world as a source for curiosity, wonder, and illumination.
In its use of mystery, perplexity, and a studied departure from linear associations with the familiar, Collins’ work is aligned with that of other great artists of the indeterminate. These include major figures of literature and poetry such as E.E. Cummings, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Arthur Rimbaud, William Faulkner, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among others; musicians such as John Cage, Arnold Schonberg, and Pierre Boulez; and visual artists such as the Surrealists, Picasso, to name only a few.
Like these virtuosos, Collins uses ambiguity, dissonance from the accustomed, and mystifying traces of the recognizable that is never fully present, in order to incite curiosity and invite the viewer’s imagination to engage the indeterminate. The goal is to produce states of feeling and modes of experience that approach a kind of transcendence.
As a portal into the making of his narrative art, Collins has long included oil and mixed media painting on black and white photographs which serve both as formative exercises or studies for his more expansive works on canvas, and as finished works of art in their own right. It is these photo paintings that form the subject of this small exhibition inaugurating the 2023 season at LewAllen Galleries.
Entitled “Blur,” the works comprising this show illustrate the way Collins uses this dimension of his art as both prototype and final result. Here, for example, there is the genesis of a basic aesthetic principle that pervades his work and upon which his narrative painting has evolved. It is the blurring between the real and the abstract.
The dialectical struggle between the two lies at the root of Collins’ metaphorical explorations of the enigmas, contradictions, and indeterminacies that for him comprise all of human existence. In Collins’ aesthetic framework, a photograph would appear to be an imprint of the most “real”: it would seem immutable, fixed, and static. Yet, in another way, a photograph can only be, in the greater context of time, an illusion of reality. A photo of a mighty forest is simply an image of trees in some stage of entropy, of life becoming death. Photos of an ancient city or classical architecture seem to present images of the most majestic and enduringly timeless, and yet what they represent are in truth ruins in process.
Collins captures this ultimate irony through the fusion of the apparent immutability of the photographic image with the messy intractability of the water/oil paint media that he uses to, in his words, “frenetically paint over and devour” the photographic surface. In the process, he shatters the binary distinction between “realism” and “abstraction,” and dissolves it, both literally and figuratively, for the balance of his aesthetic and artistic imagination and oeuvre.
The energy of brushing paint over the stasis of photograph gives rise to the conceptual freedom in Collins’ art that feeds the meditative sublimity that has come to characterize his more complex narrative oil painting. Here in his photo paintings, there are the most fundamental examples of how he engages and resolves the apparent antinomy between these modes of visual expression.
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These photo paintings also reveal another related thematic aspect of Collins work which deals with memory and how photography provides indelible, often uncomfortable testimony of the past, of facts or consequences that are sometimes tragic, of ruins or devastation. With his photo paintings – and in this exhibition, for example, with images of the Coliseum in Rome, the “glorious dark and damp visages of Venice,” and the ruins of Pompeii – Collins engages sometimes brutal realities of the past through pigments he feeds and layers onto the surfaces in a process he describes as “echoing personal auto referential forces in my memories, though they are also universal and capable of providing suggestion of a wide variety of feelings and memories to any viewer willing to spend time meditating on each work.”
In further considering how memory is involved with his photo paintings, Collins has observed: These paintings on photographs become a reflection of memory, though my creative intention goes much further. [They] transform to other worlds, capable of illumination, the evocation of the spiritual, of being the mysterious and at times, the sacred. Each viewer is encouraged to form new conscious meanings from within each painting. The process of surface evaporation
I utilize in my painting process reflects aspects of time that alters the image of the landscape reflected in the photo. In these works, a certain aspect of hope emerges through the luminosity of pigment. The value of colorfully grey pigment transforms each image through destruction and into transformation and illumination.
Collins is also intentional about the content of the photographic imagery he uses and the emotional and spiritual effect it engenders for him. He is clear that the process of engagement between photo and painting is ultimately beyond additive producing inspiration for him that is uniquely synergistic. Through the combination of painting and photo, he observes that the “necessity of the fact” in a photograph is
released, creating a sense of freedom and liberation from the enslavement to the “reality” it purports to depict. At the same time, he refuses to let go of that “reality” the photo purports to document, and in the context of memory he maintains a “never forget” commitment. He talks about that as follows: The act of application of paint on the photo is not intended to cover the suffering or memories of what occurred upon the land or to a people. Instead it is intended to highlight all aspects of the consciousness and content, which these places and events engendered in my thoughts and emotions after engaging them through past visits and understandings. Ruins, forests, rivers, and all aspects of natural form and land attract my eye as points of departure and creative discovery. Historic events commend my heart and burn in my consciousness. In every photographic vista layered by pigment, I have amplified a physical erasure by time. The photographic information emerging through veils of pigment is intentional and should act as a reminder of what occurred in these places or to people. Moreover, what we find through the films of pigment dancing with the original details of each photograph provide new possible meanings. Through mediation between static photo and kinetic painting it is my intention to suggest, with paintings on photographs, the possibility for enlightenment, creative mysteries, and new discoveries. Derived from the predicates suggested in these photo paintings, Collins’ larger oil canvases build on the principles established here. Powerful painted imagery is sublimated in layers of thick paint that harken back to the effects emanating from the photo paintings. In both genres, there are distinct and provocative relationships suggested between the physical world and the spiritual, between the “real” and the “abstract.” Always, they emanate mystery and uncertainty. Sublime beauty resides in the opaque. But they demonstrate that, as with all art of the indeterminate, if not all art in general, the unresolved is all the more provocative and the question is more interesting than the answer. And for Collins, it all begins with these photo paintings.
-Kenneth R. MarvelAfter the Burning, 2020-21
Mixed media on black & white photograph, 30.5 x 41.3 inches
Inspired by research in Italy, these enigmatic paintings on photographs by Michael Roque Collins suggest classical portals from ancient architecture that entice the viewer to explore rich dreamstates of the human psyche. Using layers of pigment to obscure elements from the ruins of Roman infrastructure – archways, aqueducts, bridges – Collins echoes a sense and memory of place while simultaneously shrouding it in mystery and perplexity. From Venice to Pompeii, Collins mediates a past that has been buried by time. Of this series, he posits “…that our memory only partially conjures what once was complete.” Through his painterly intervention on top of photographs, Collins connects darkness with light and offers the possibility of finding universal forms within the void.
Descending the Bridge, 2015
Mixed media on black & white photograph, 10 x 8 inches
Crossing Rialto, 2015-16 Mixed media on black & white photograph, 8 x 11 inches
This exhilarating series of Photo Paintings by Michael Roque Collins is galvanized by his lifelong experiences in the forests of the Rocky Mountains. In these expressive works, Collins’ intention is to evoke “the feelings that moving through the woods generate where details of the forest become blurred and the imagination is unleashed.” He adeptly captures the way in which the landscape appears out of focus and the path becomes uncertain when swiftly traversing the forest floor. One perceives a quickening pace from the shadowy and illuminate patterns produced by Collins’ gestural brushwork amongst the dense vegetation. Within his frenetic, abstract brushstrokes, the viewer is welcomed to pause and ruminate on the profound “mysteries inherent through movement in nature.”
Moving Through the Remnants, 2016 Oil on black & white photograph, 23.8 x 35.3 inches
Classical Forest Exit, 2015-16
Oil & resin on black & white photograph, 8.5 x 11 inches
Forest Cathedral, 2016-17
Oil on black & white photograph, 23.5 x 35 inches
Lone Standing, 2015-16
Oil & resin on black & white photograph, 8 x 10 inches
Moving Through Inland Waters, 2015-16 Oil & resin on black & white photograph, 13.5 x 19.3 inches
Upland Meadow, 2015-16
Oil & resin on black & white photograph, 8.5 x 11 inches
Upland Meadow, 2016 Oil on black & white photograph, 24 x 35 inches
Rising Above the Stone Serpent is the first in a series of Collins’ Photo Paintings featuring the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm in Siem Riep, Cambodia. Within this magical realm, forest growth is creeping back in and having a pronounced effect upon the temples–defiant tree roots are fracturing the stone itself. “That sense of entropy expressed through cyclical patterns of destruction in nature has long been a thematic anchor in my paintings,” mused Collins. The transformative act of nature overtaking man-made structures is reflected in Collins’ unique process, which in part destroys the photograph by “feeding paint to the surface.” In this distinctive work, the viewer is invited on a meditative journey of discovery into the physical and spiritual death and rebirth of place.
Rising Above the Stone Serpent, 2017-18 Mixed media on black & white photograph, 40 x 60 inches
1998 Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, MFA
1984 University of Houston, Houston, TX, Post Baccalaureate Studies
1978 University of Houston, Houston, TX, BFA
1963-73 Lowell Collins School of Art, Houston, TX 1960 Museum of Fine Arts Art School, Houston, TX
2023 Blur: The Photo Paintings, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
2021 Transmissions of Light, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
2019 Reliquaries, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
2017 Inland Mountain Journey, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
Tides of Memory, McMurray University, Abilene, TX Salon Prive, Preview of The Inland Mountain Journey Series, Presented by LewAllen Galleries at Saint Street Studio, Houston, TX
2016 Works on Paper, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
2015 The Venetian Series, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
Salon Prive, Preview of The Venetian Series, presented by LewAllen Galleries at Saint Street Studio, Houston, TX
2013 Beyond Earth’s Rhythm, LewAllen Galleries at the Railyard, Santa Fe, NM
2011 Tides of Memory, LewAllen Galleries at the Railyard, Santa Fe, NM
2010 Shadowlands, Richard Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
2009 From Ruins to Resurrection, LewAllen Galleries at the Railyard, Santa Fe, NM UAC Gallery (curated by Jim Edwards), HBU, Houston, TX
2008 Sojourn In the Shadowlands, G Gallery, Houston, TX
Sacred Landscapes, Felipe Cossio del Pomar Cultural Center, San Isidro, Lima, Peru Sojourn in the Shadowlands, Munchskirche Museum, Salzweddel, Germany
2007 Memory Gardens, LewAllen Contemporary Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Gerald Peters Galleries, Dallas, TX
Ritual of Memory, G Gallery, Houston TX
2006 Solo Survey, Montgomery College Art Center
2005 Forum Rituals, Corpus Christi Art Center, Corpus Christi, TX
2004 Recent Works of Michael Roque Collins, Bacardi Museum, Santiago, Cuba
A Ritual of Memory, LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Tropological Landscapes, Ellen Noel Art Museum, Odessa, TX.
2003 Gardens of Mystery, Gallery 101 in conjunction with Red Bud Gallery, Houston, TX
2001 Retrospective solo exhibition, University of Saint Thomas Gallery, Houston, TX
2000 Michael Roque Collins, Edith Baker Gallery, Dallas, TX
1999 Gardens of Terrible Beauty, Virginia Miller Gallery, Coral Gables, FL
1998 Brookhaven College, Dallas, Texas 1997 Lowell Collins Gallery, Houston, TX 1996 Sacred & Profane Spaces, Virginia Miller Gallery, Coral Gables, FL 1995 McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, TX; also 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993 1994 C. G. Jung Center, Houston, TX; also 1989 1989 Framboyan Gallery, New Orleans, LA 1987 Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Inc., Houston, TX; also 1986, 1983
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Odgen Museum, New Orleans, LA Ellen Noel Museum, Odessa TX
St. Thomas University, Jones Hall Gallery, Houston, TX Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL Lowe Museum of Art, Miami, FL San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX