LewAllenGalleries
Michael Roque Collins: Transmissions of Light
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Throughout his five-decade career, Michael Roque Collins has been recognized for his painterly images that are masterfully imbued with dramatic symbols of destruction and renewal. Referencing the overwhelming forces of the natural world, Collins conveys his scenes as metaphorical evocations of both the cyclical forces around us and the human struggle that can lead toward the possibility of renewal.
The dark surreal landscapes included in Transmissions of Light appear to portray the ruins of a civilization from the distant past and in the process of being reclaimed by wilderness. In these paintings, Greco-Roman busts, Corinthian columns, temples, and other oblique references to classical sculpture and architecture have been long overtaken by entwining vines, looming trees, and massive flowers. “These architectural structures convey a sense of power and order,” Collins writes, “though ultimately their represented states are overgrown and consumed by a vision of a reclaiming verdant nature.”
In this exhibition, the viewer travels through darkened forests, vibrant wooded vistas, dense copses of blooming vegetation, occasionally coming upon soothing clearings of water, isolated ruins, or perhaps the ghostly apparition of a human figure. Evoking a sense of dreamlike, post-apocalyptic pilgrimage, Collins ultimately brings his viewers to ascendant, open places filled with light and color. “This series brings forth the healing power of illumination, through my reoccurring interest in the heroic landscape, epic in scale and filled with elements of the sacred and mythological,” Collins writes.
