The Seduction of Sight - Regarding the Art of CJ Collins

“There is an outer reality that nonetheless has been given to our spirit directly…This reality is pure movement. There are no inelastic things, but only evolving things, no fixed conditions that stay as they are, but only conditions that change their state.“

Henri Bergson



The artistic work of CJ Collins balances at the interface between painting and drawing. Her pictures are determined by linear expressions of the changing state of external perception combined with experiences of an internal world. The artist expresses a subjective sensibility regarding this phenomenon of natural existence and reveals her individual vision through a creative transformation process.

Informed by a highly sensitive and observant perception of the seemingly invisible flowing forces of life, CJ Collins’ compositions of energised markings are of subject matter that is usually hidden from view. Her interest is in the graphic transformation of the vibrating flows of energy defining the world’s sensual and perceptual veneer in its full complexity and abundance.

The artist’s work suggests an internal world of experience presented as if by a seismographic instrument endowed perhaps with a moving compassion and sensibility reacting to tensions and impressions that result in a vocabulary that consolidates feelings and events into a visible form. Meanwhile, the often labyrinthine, interweaved contours that form do not obey the inclination to mimic figures. Instead, the linear gestures take on the energy of that which takes place beyond natural appearances.

In this sense the line can be interpreted as a lifeline, observed in its traces, its entangled ways, its abrupt changes of direction, its leap toward a Genesis that is visualised or simply suspected in its form. Its apparently uncontrolled outgrowths often spread exuberantly over the entire canvas, hinting at concrete forms but then simply dissolving into the next moment and suddenly losing entirely the expected figure. The lines and forms reflect a somewhat childlike hesitation and yet powerful appearance, gently moving passionately and confidently within a dynamic process of creation governed by time and space and the metamorphoses of phenomena.The work never reaches a complete and final closure for the viewer, but is constantly recharged by the twisted system of lines and the temptation to break through the complex structures of the painting and to lose oneself in continuous contemplation of the intertwined growth. Simplified to Scarfitto, CJ Collins’ creations appear as traces of a merely suspected existence, levitating above the canvas, or they develop on the surface, partly covered with color to supply the area of the painting with an abstract, readable and graphic structure.

A constant underlying metamorphosis of form – an existence given to the non-existent, the utter freedom from the appearance of the Grapheme – gains, through examination, a haunting presence. The idea of the image and its self-realization enters the consciousness of the viewer who is given a presentation of evolution, expansion of life and the passing of time.

Even though CJ Collins’ artistic interest is associated with the representation of seismographic natural phenomena, her work by no means attempts reproduction of the tangible as experienced by the senses. Rather, she formulates a sensible, almost poetic approximation of natural existence when viewed from the perspective of her metaphorical openness. Therefore, her linear figures of subtle balance never appear to be caught in a terminated final state. The contours seem to constantly be in the process of development, in a state of potential ability to transform and change. CJ Collins’ compositions are aimed at the “formative powers“ of nature, those that Paul Klee once described so accurately as “spatial-temporal movement“, bringing the essence of objects into view.

Dr. Uwe Schramm