To the north of Sydney lies the Hawkesbury River. Home for the past 31 years.
The movement of currents and tides over mudflats. The broken lines of broken jetties.
Mirrored light.
Masts and Hulls reflected.
This estuarine environment is my inspiration and its evocation the primary focus of my work.
For David Collins, painting and drawing streams from the ongoing closeness he feels with the environment. Loose and languid lines, much like the Mangrove roots that edge the Hawkesbury River surrounding the artist’s home, sprawl across the canvas in search of connection. Reaching out, they intertwine within the fold of intersections; drawing relationships between marks, colours, spaces and tones.
In Collins’ use of line, the paint brush also acts as pencil, both utensils unified as one to be dragged across the composition in varying lengths and strengths. It is the act of tying painting and drawing together that evokes such expression, such earnest, that the familiar landscapes held dear to artist are revealed and mapped. As much as his work is about observing, it too is about feeling. We feel the vibrancy and quietening force of nature and as a result are better for it. In this way, there is also a sense of the serendipitous moment, of slowing and looking, of the inextricable relationship between the individual and the natural world - lost but perhaps not forgotten, available to you if you are available to it.
David Collins is a landscape painter who has lived on an island in the Hawkesbury River, NSW, since 1987. He crosses the Hawkesbury regularly by row boat and this close contact with the river has had a deep impact on his work.
Since 1990, David has held 16 solo exhibitions of paintings and drawings as well as participated in many group exhibitions. David was able to further pursue a long time fascination with Chinese painting and calligraphy in 2004 when he was offered a residency and teaching position at the North West University for Minorities in Lan Zhou, China and between 2009 and 2014 he held part-time tutoring positions with TAFE NSW and Sydney Art School.
David’s most recent achievements have been –Finalist 2018, 2016 and 2015 Korea Australia Arts Foundation Art Prize; Highly Commended 2013 Wynne Prize for landscape painting from the Art Gallery of NSW; Finalist, 2016 Grace Cossington Smith Art Award; Winner, 2011 Painting Prize – Hornsby Art Prize.
Nock Art Foundation
2019 Sharp, Myff: The Hawkesbury, Catalogue Introduction, Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Sydney
2014 Yip, Andrew: Recent Paintings, Catalogue Introduction, Depot Gallery II, Sydney
2010 Whitehead, Anne: Headland, Catalogue Introduction, Artarmon Galleries, Sydney
2008 Cummings, Elisabeth: Downstream, Catalogue Introduction, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery
2000 Vidal, Luis: Inland Sea, Catalogue Introduction, Artarmon Galleries, Sydney
David Collins
Passage
September 2-24, 2020