Jacob Collins, art work
I’ve been following Jacob Collins career for a while. The Classical Realists have claimed him, the Academic painters have claimed him, but as far as I’m concerned, Jacob Collins is a Contemporary Realist. The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) lists his website under Contemporary Realism–works for me.
Although Jacob Collins has been trained as an academic painter, there seems to be a deep conscious or unconscious appreciation of the camera and Modern Art.
Take the still life called “Tangerine,” a small painting, but one of my favorites. The composition of this painting is a good example of Modernist composition, reminiscent of Matisse, Motherwell, Adolf Gottlieb, combined with realistic painting. Also the luminosity of the tangerine itself has a photographic quality. I think this is a good thing because it feels as if Jacob Collins is well aware of the culture around him.
In Jacob Collins’s self-portrait there is the tension of the different shapes of the frames and of the palette, a composition that could be right out of the abstract paintings of the 1920’s, 1960’s or a painter like Matisse. The cropping of different objects is a contemporary element. And Collins’s rendition of objects on a bulletin board, reminds me of the art work done by artist Steve Hawley in the 1980’s.
Along with the technical virtuosity, these elements give Jacob Collins’s art work their “zing.” These are not works of art done in the 1850’s, clearly these are Contemporary Realist paintings
Jacob Collins, website
A word (or two) about Jacob Collins’s website, since this is an Internet art review. The art website is classy, easy to navigate and loads quickly. The viewer quickly has an overview of Collins’s extreme artistic versatility.
As a Web visitor, however, I want to have information about Jacob Collins. Aside from the fact that search engines only index text and not gorgeous art images (and I would like lots of people to find Jacob Collins’s website), as a web viewer I want to “get to know” Jacob Collins.
It’s very hard as an artist to write about yourself, but written text helps endear the artist to the Web viewer, makes the artist seem accessible and is an invitation to the Web visitor to stop by the artist’s website more often.