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Exhibit Essay

As art lovers, you may be familiar with the term “Landscape” and quite likely with the term “Abstraction.” Whether you are partial to one or the other, this artist, Joan Maureen Collins, embraces both terms and styles of art with equal respect, passionately sharing the joy she has found in this diversity by creating highly energized “abstract landscape” paintings, in both large and small sizes.

There is no question that these abstracted landscapes are indeed made from impressions of the land. These paintings are landscapes, space-scapes and all inferences in between. They are, in fact, artist-scapes, reflective of places the artist has traveled to and re-created as painterly surfaces, as her brushstrokes navigate the memories captured by her mind and instilled in her soul. What’s left are the impressions of each destination - a moment, an interaction, a particular picture. These personal voyages come back to life in abstract form, with majestic interpretations of the beauty that she initially discovered.

Everything about Joan, and these new works, can be summed up by the title of this exhibit - “In Motion, In Stillness.” Her creative process embodies both. Each painting is inspired from, either a visual study of a landscape, or a glimpse of a moment that has been captured in motion and re-created in the stillness of her studio. But this juxtaposition does not end there. As part of the artists’ creative process she does not remain “still,” and prefers to remains in continual “motion,”as attested to in her bio.

       “She paints like a sculptor, moving, adding, and scraping paint around the canvas. This technique results in striking contours made of heavy, opaque color and texture against thin, filmy transparency. She also makes many of her own brushes for effect, using feathers, ropes, wire, and other desert and beach findings. Joan compares her creative process to jumping off a cliff into an abyss, then floating in the adrenaline of the experience.”

All things start with an action, and Joan’s painting process reflects that. The simple brush of a feather, with a spiritual intent, starts her on her way. And although she has a sense of where she is going with each painting, the process of creation becomes an adventure itself, as she adds numerous layers and makes several passes on each canvas.

Within this large body of new work are subsets. One of those is titled, “Asymptopes.”  This unique name is a take on Asymptote, an analytical geometry term. For our purposes, in Joan’s oeuvre, it exemplifies how these paintings take us to infinity. And they do. In this series of new paintings she takes us on a voyage that goes beyond the limits of the horizon, to a new world interpreted through her vision as she embellishes upon her memories of the land by adding her own spiritual impressions.

For us, Joan’s new paintings create a sense of freedom, as with each brushstroke, she liberates the landscape into abstraction, helping us open our minds to life’s possibilities. Ultimately, Joan Maureen Collins works are about space. Her space, outdoor space, and even our collective space. She doesn’t define it, she liberates it.

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