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[av_heading heading=’David Collins: With The Tide’ tag=’h1′ style=’blockquote modern-quote modern-centered’ subheading_active=” size=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” subheading_size=’15’ av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” color=” custom_font=” margin=” margin_sync=’true’ padding=’10’ link=’manually,http://’ link_target=” id=” custom_class=” av_uid=’av-ke9h05nd’ admin_preview_bg=”][/av_heading]
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DAVID COLLINS TRANSLATES THE SENSIBILITIES OF THE HAWKESBURY RIVER REGION WITH A PERSONAL AND DISTINCT VISUAL LANGUAGE.
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Going with the tide takes on new meaning for Hawkesbury River-based artist David Collins. In the early hours of each morning David departs his secluded island home and rows with the river’s current, setting up shop on a sandstone rock platform along the river bank or an open area of bush. Within these humble surrounds David paints en plein air, drawing inspiration from the effects of wind, water and the “scruffiness of the Australian bush,” as the artist puts it.
David’s translation of land, space and form is distinct and carries with it an eerily punctuated sense of nostalgia. His recent work Known Universe recounts a landscape familiar to many in the area: the deep cut-out sandstone cliffs along the M1, the rusty skeletal frame of the 1889 Hawksbury River Railway bridge and the glistening surface of the river below.
David’s interpretation of the Australian landscape is personal yet, clearly, shared. “Having a handful of people who appreciate what you do and wish to buy it and live with it,” he says, “is satisfying.”
Back in his self-contained island studio, designed by himself and partner Ana Pollak, also an artist, he refines his en plein air gouache, charcoal, graphite or pastel on paper studies by translating them into larger oil on canvas works.
For David, the relationships within each individual painting or study have become his main focus: how does the colour of the water or rocks or trees relate to their tone, line or shape? There is a language to David’s paintings which becomes evident upon closer investigation. A unique sense of distance and space filters through the works’ surfaces.
In many of David’s works we are positioned in between two spaces. We find ourselves in a space of limbo unable to breach the surface. This state of flux is a crucial element of David’s work, one he has spent decades perfecting.
Since completing a Diploma of Visual Art at the Canberra School of Art in 1980, David has credited his dedication to art to a group of teachers at Hornsby TAFE in the late 1970s led by artist Clem Millward. “Through their understanding and passion for the subject they instilled in me, and many other students, a sense that art mattered and was a lifelong journey worth pursuing,” he says. Now, 40 years and 17 solo exhibitions later, David is continuing to reimagine the environments around him. He undertook a residency in Queenstown, New Zealand which, he admits, has already begun to inform his practice. “Perhaps, as a result of this trip,” he says, “the low, worn, sandstone escarpments of the Hawkesbury seem to be morphing into high mountains.”
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