Gerard Collins: ‘The Picture Alive’
Gerard Collins celebrates life through his paintings. Since 1977 his critically acclaimed oeuvre has been built in series with self-imposed rules and patterns offering the viewer pure visual pleasure through his fluid mastery of paint, and inherent understanding of colour, composition and design.
Collins has won awards, been showered with accolades and been compared to many great European masters. Even so he has been able to stay true to his own vision and attuned to his own world. In Collins’ estimation, every object can be the subject of a beautiful painting, whether it’s an extension cord on a floor, a vase of flowers, his cat or the Taj Mahal.
In this most recent series, Collins is inspired by the American poet Walt Whitman and although this theme has been present throughout his work, here it is presented clearly and unabashedly.
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” – first stanza from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
Gallery 78, Fredericton Friday, October 4, 5-7pm