Preview Catalog
The Venetian Series Michael Roque Collins
OPEN STUDIO
SALON PRIVÉ Saturday, May 9th 3PM - 8PM
2825 Saint Street, Houston, TX 77027
Preview Catalog
MICHAEL ROQUE COLLINS THE VENETIAN SERIES Open studio salon privÉ may 9. 2015, 3 PM - 8 PM 2825 Saint Street, Houston, TX 77027 In Advance of the Artist’s Solo Exhibition at LewAllen Galleries, November 2015
Railyard Arts District | Paseo de Peralta | tel 505.988.3250 | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | www.lewallengalleries.com Cover: The Artist’s Studio, (left) Through the Yellow Wall, 2014-15, oil on linen, 30” x 40”
Michael Roque Collins THE VENETIAN SERIES The work of Michael Roque Collins has been acknowledged by one of the world’s most authoritative art critics and historians, London-based Edward Lucie-Smith, as having the notable power to activate imagination through what he called “engaging ambiguity.” This is a quality of Collins’ work that Lucie-Smith compared to that of music, and it finds extraordinary new expression in Collins’ newest series of oils on canvas entitled The Venetian Series. Collins is an internationally venerated post-symbolist and expressionist painter who, in this latest group of alluring works, has reached a new peak in artistry and ingenuity. The Venetian Series, examples of which are contained in this preview, explores ideas of redemption, memory, enlightenment, and the relationship between the physical world and psychological realms through mysterious, haunting, and simultaneously hopeful scenes inspired by the sacred and beautiful spaces and monuments of Venice. The new works represent a breakthrough in his career that spans more than 40 years and more than 50 solo exhibitions, further developing his acclaimed capacity to test the boundaries of expression and post symbolic representation. His paintings consistently explore the human condition itself.
a pulpit, causes a confrontation with his memory and our own. The viewer is reminded of these familiar scenes and must reflect on them and their meaning. They become symbols of our own beliefs and our understanding of the world. These places of meditation are cast into darkness and doubt. The images appear disturbed, defined by a sense of disorder and turmoil and an energy that suggests destruction. On this eve of potential mythic Apocalypse, these monuments appear to be crumbling, burning, giving form to the splenetic quality Collins sees in the surrounding world and within the human mind. While the spaces render the physical, they reflect the psychological state of man, a journey into the subconscious and conscious, where disarray and peace can exist in charging and conflicting states. These vestiges of human presence are caught in this war, but in the distance, and in some paintings from within the foreground, emerges an illumination, enlightenment in a dark age. This light gives a sense of the possibility of redemption. They provide an analogy for the possibility of the mind.
Collins’ latest works display the rich texture for which he is known. Canvases are given life through heavy and vigorous pigment application. Collins constructs scenes shrouded in mystery using brushes, pallet knives, and his hands, brushing, scraping, pooling, and obscuring the images and paint through layers of color. These surfaces and textures, despite their increasing complexity, have grown even more refined in this series and allow for the gentle revelation of a new light—a beacon of hope—which emerges from the recesses of the canvas, from the distance, to symbolize the possibility of rebirth, growth, and enlightenment. Out of scenes of disturbance and the splenetic, grows hope.
Born in Texas in 1955, Collins earned a BFA from the University of Houston in 1978 and later earned an MFA in painting from Southern Methodist University. Since the mid-1970s he has directed the Lowell Collins School of Art in Houston; he has also held positions on the art faculties of several universities. Collins has had more than 50 solo and group exhibitions since 1974, including, most recently, a two-man show with Hans Molzberger, entitled Never Let it Rest: Sojourns in the Shadowlands, at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Michigan. His work resides in numerous public and private collections, such as the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the El Paso Museum of Art; the San Antonio Museum of Art; and both the Lowe Museum of Art and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami.
In the foreground, Collins erects monuments of Venice, depicting arches, pulpits, altars, and the iconic waterways of the Italian city, caught in reverie, or a dreamlike state. These familiar spaces appear in a turbulent state, obscured by a sense time, memory, and emotion, a beckoning to the artist’s own remembrance and the viewer’s understanding of these places, whether in the realm of dreams or in the physical world. An evocation of the familiar, whether in the form of an altar or
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The Artist’s Studio: Harbor Storm, 2014-15, oil on linen, 72” x 100”
Venetian Moorings, 2014-15, oil on linen, 60” x 122”
The Pulpit, 2014, oil on linen, 60” x 50”
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Transcendental Passage, 2014, oil on linen, 48” x 58”
Transcending the Altar Wall, 2014, oil on linen, 60” x 42”
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Dark Passage, 2014-15, oil on linen, 40” x 30”
Harbor Storm, 2014-15, oil on linen, 72” x 100”
Sacred Towers, 2014-15, oil on linen, 60” x 50”
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Rupture Rapture, 2014-15, oil on linen, 40” x 30”
Adrift in the Dogona, 2014, oil on linen, 54.25” x 32.25”
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Rupture of the Nave, 2014, oil on linen, 60” x 50”
Bearing the Tide, 2014, oil on board, 32” x 43”
Michael Roque Collins
Born:
2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1991 1990 1989 1987 1986 1983
1955, Houston, TX
EDUCATION 1998 Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, MFA in Painting 1984 University of Houston, Houston, TX, Post Baccalaureate Studies in Drawing/Painting 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 (7 shows since 1991) SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2015 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2013 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2012 La Galerie K, Paris, France Zeitkunst Galerie, Halle, Germany Tarrant County College South Campus, Carillion Gallery, Ft, Worth, TX Kilgore College, Kilgore, TX 2011 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2009 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM UAC Gallery (Curated by Jim Edwards), HBU,Houston TX 2008 G Gallery, Houston, TX Felipe Cossio del Pomar Cultural Center, San Isidro, Lima, Peru Munchskirche Museum, Salzweddel, Germany
LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM Gerald Peters Galleries Dallas, Dallas, TX G Gallery, Houston, TX Montgomery College Art Center Corpus Christi Art Center, Corpus Christi, TX Bacardi Museum, Santiago, Cuba LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM Ellen Noel Art Museum, Odessa, TX Gallery 101 in conjunction with Red Bud Gallery, Houston, TX Redbud Gallery, Houston, TX University of Saint Thomas Gallery, Houston, TX Edith Baker Gallery, Dallas, TX Houston Art League, Retrospective Solo Exhibition, Houston, Tx Virginia Miller Gallery, Coral Gables, FL Brookhaven College, Dallas, TX Lowell Collins Gallery, Houston, TX Virginia Miller Gallery, Coral Gables, FL McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, TX C.G. Jung Center, Houston, TX McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, TX McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, TX McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, TX C.G. Jung Center, Houston, TX Framboyan Gallery, New Orleans, LA McMurtrey Gallery, Houston, TX Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, TX Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, TX Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Houston, TX
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX Ellen Noel Museum, Odessa, TX J. Wayne Stark University Gallery, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX Lowe Museum of Art, Miami, FL Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX St. Thomas University, Jones Hall Gallery, Houston, TX San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA
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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | tel 505.988.3250 Santa Fe, New Mexio 87501 | www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com