Memories of things past
Collins’ latest show is up at LewAllen Galleries
For Michael Roque Collins, art is the family business. Both his parents and numerous relatives were artists. Instead of toys, Collins said, his father — the late Lowell Daunt Collins — would buy him Kachina dolls and Jalisco pottery to play with as a child.
Memories of sacred objects and furniture in the family household infuse “Reliquaries,” Collins’ show of 25 huge oil-on-linen paintings at Santa Fe’s LewAllen Galleries, which opened Oct. 25 and runs through Nov. 30.
One of the most compelling pieces in Houston-based artist’s show is called “The Weeping Chair.” It is where Collins’ father used to sit when the artist and his wife Gayle would change his bandages after chemotherapy. “We took care of my father until the very end. We didn’t do hospice until the night before he died,” Collins said.
One of Collins’ techniques is to take an interior object, such as a chair, and place it outside. The backdrop for “The Weeping Chair” shows burning barns, which appeared in a dream the artist’s father had the night before he died in 2003 at the age of 79. To the left of the chair, an abstract spirit is rising, representing Lowell Collins ascending to the next world.
“The painting celebrates (my father’s) joyous and passionate life … through the intense hues used in the chair that are echoed throughout the composition,” Collins said in an email. Daunt Collins was the
former dean of what is now the Glassell School of Art in Houston.
In “The Garden of the Cures,” Kongo nail fetish figures appear, demonstrating just how farflung the influences are for Collins’ latest show. Known as Nkondi, the mystical idols are made by the Kongo people of Africa.
In an email, Collins said the “painting reveals a strong dream image where interiors and exterior are set in opposition expressing the dualities in life. The interior overgrown with vegetation or new life is seen with a variety of Congo nail fetish figures reflecting healing and a creative esthetic I share with my father and family.”
Collins’ work first appeared at LewAllen as part of a group show in 1992, he said. He has been primarily represented by the Santa Fe gallery since 2002. The artist also maintains representation with Redbud Gallery in Houston, Virginia Miller Gallery in Miami and La Galerie K in Paris. His works are in numerous museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and the Bass Museum in Miami.
From reading his artist’s curriculum vitae, one could be forgiven for assuming Collins is much older than he is. The first entry is dated 1960, when he began his education at the Museum of Fine Arts Art School in Houston at the tender age of 5. He went on to earn a bachelors of fine arts from the University of Houston and a master of fine arts at Southern Methodist University.
During his career, Collins has been the lead professor of painting at Texas Tech University, Sam
Houston State University and at Houston Baptist University, where he is also now senior director of visual arts at the School of Fine Arts and artist in residence — painting.
An interview with Collins, who has a breathless style of speaking, is like taking a crash course in art history and Jungian psychology at the same time. He cites as his influences for his Post Symbolist paintings such movements as the Hudson River School, where “light is a healing form of hope,” to the expressionism of German artist Max Beckmann.
Asked how his work has changed over the years, Collins noted that there has been “a maturation of color and a growing appreciation for chiaroscuro,” or the strong contrast between light and dark.
There’s no doubting the native Texan’s enthusiasm for the Land of Enchantment. Talking on the phone after many hours on the road traveling to Santa Fe from Texas, Collins avowed that “New Mexico is one of my favorite places in the world to exist.”
Japan is another. Collins and his wife have recently returned from the densely populated country, where the reverence for the land inspired Collins’ next artistic endeavor, “Floating Worlds.”
A longtime student of judo, Collins draws a comparison between jumping around a huge canvas holding a brush and the martial art. In addition to brushes, Collins applies pigments by hand and with knives and does a lot of scraping. “Each painting is a challenge,” he said.