“The pictorial engine that propels much of the work of the painter and printmaker David Collins is a dialogue between crisply defined geometrical shapes and decorative motifs and a vast immersive space, an infinitely expanding formlessness that is bounded (literally but not in the viewer’s imagination) by the painting’s outside edge. Collins proposes a dynamic tension between these seemingly oppositional forces or conditions and achieves a dialectical resolution—tenuous in some works, seemingly inevitable in others—that conveys a sense of complex pressures aligning in compositional harmony.”
-Stephen Maine
Born in Iowa and raised in Texas, David Collins received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. Known for his colorful, densely layered abstract paintings. Collins is fascinated by the fluidness of memory and creates a visual language dominated by sites of airports, homes, and construction sites from his recollections. Collins renders these industrial sites and locus of his memories in highly geometric planes and vivid colors. As the viewer is led through his complex compositions, structures begin to assemble into familiar forms while simultaneously expanding and fragmenting.
Collins has enjoyed a successful career, exhibiting nationally and internationally including with Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Kent CT, Valley House Gallery, Dallas TX, Susan Eley Fine Art, New York NY, Heidi Cho Gallery, New York NY, Jeffrey Coploff Gallery, New York NY, Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, GA, the National Academy, New York NY, the Dorsky Curatorial Program, Queens NY, and the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville FL. In addition, the artist has won a Robert Blackburn printmaking workshop fellowship as well as two Yaddo residencies. His work is in many private and public collections including the United States Department of State, Washington DC, the Library of Congress, Washington D.C, the University of Iowa Hospital, Iowa City, IA, the Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute, Jingdezhen, China, the Dallas Jesuit Art Museum, the Dallas Country Club, DFW international Airport, and Meridian Teterboro Airport and many others.
Collins lives and works on the North Fork of Long Island, New York.