Here is an excerpt from Wild Blue Yonder by Stephen Maine, the essay Stephen wrote for the catalogue.

— While Collins has used words and numerals in his work for many years, language is especially prominent in Tell Tails. Incomplete, faded, printed in reverse, but legible nevertheless is a headline from not so many years ago: “Airstrikes in Eastern Afghanistan.” This infiltration of reportage on America’s longest war into the refined atmosphere of geometric abstraction is startling and evocative, even though the neutral factuality of the text is accompanied not by heart-rending imagery such as we are currently receiving from photographers and videographers in Ukraine, but by a small clipping of grainy, gray newsprint.

Some biographical information may be useful here. Collins grew up in the American heartland. His father founded Collins Radio, and later innovated significant advancements in avionics. This legacy of aviation technology contributes enormously to the artist’s themes, as seen in his various allusions to the mechanics and experience of flight. It appears that he, more pointedly than ever, is working through his relationship to the morally ambiguous role of military aviation in this country—both in the defense of American airspace, and in questionable (and arguably criminal) US aggression abroad.

Which is not to say that Tell Tails takes a position on US foreign policy, or the responsibility of the individual living (and making art) in a bellicose culture. But the introspective Collins recognizes that there are links, however recondite or oblique, between the family business that shaped his early life and the decisions he makes, decades later, in his studio. His self-appointed task as a painter is not to illustrate or explain those connections, but to try to make sense of them for himself, in visual terms, on just a few square feet of canvas. Such is the density of meaning that’s possible in painting—and Collins’s deft ability—that these works can confront the anxiety of influence and still soar.

—Stephen Maine