Biography

Collins’ works are shaped over extended periods and hold the history of their making in the dense painterly ground from which they emerge. The paintings possess a formal weight and palpable physicality in their encrusted, layered and labored surfaces. The essential viscosity of the compositions Collins renders, reflect a process of slow contemplation in which gradual thoughts are not only formed, but continually malleable and left reverberating on the edge of movement. The works operate like an active archeological site, in which the bones of ideas are perpetually dug out, brought to light, dusted and reburied to be later excavated again. The painted forms feel settled and established through large passages of time. Collins’ paintings expand and contract around a cognitive cartography particular to the artist. Similar to a stream of water impressing itself onto the earth or spreading through an ancient floodplain, the works slowly carve and reshape familiar routes, depositing a rich sediment of references as they journey through their painterly landscapes. The works are rooted in a syntax of recurring signs and symbols often interspersed in hidden pathways throughout their organic compositions. For instance, enduring motifs of the adjacent circle and square recur, sometimes rendered on the verge of lithic sculptural relief and at other moments hazily emerging through a veil of translucent color. Often a series of interwoven forms will catch the light, like the skeletal body of a buried fossil enticing the eye from within the face of a rock.

James Collins (1992) graduated with a BA (Hons) from Wimbledon College of Art, London, in 2015 and Master of Arts (MA) from Royal College of Art, London, in 2017. Upcoming and recent solo and dual exhibitions include; 'Deltas', Encounter, Lisbon (2026), ‘Ground’, Workplace, London (2024), ‘James Collins – New Paintings’, Encounter, Lisbon (2023), ‘Occultation’ CAR Gallery, Bologne (2021), ‘14’ PM/AM, London (2021), ‘Penumbra’ Claas Reiss, London (2021). Selected recent group exhibitions include ‘Domino’, Encounter (2025), ‘Passages’, Encounter (2024), 'Excavation: Macro to Micro' curated by Deborah Smith, London (2024), ‘Once, Then, Gone’ New Child Gallery, Belgium (2023), ‘The Reason For Painting’ Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, United Kingdom (2023), ‘Here and Long Ago’ Gerhard Hofland, Amsterdam (2023), ‘Alte Freunde, neue Freunde’ Claas Reiss, London (2021) ‘Hideaway’ Monti8, Latina (Italy), ‘Abstract with Figure’ at James Fuentes, New York (2020), ‘Lost & Found’ at Rod Barton in London (2017), ‘Duo’ at Galleri Jacob Bjørn in Aarhus, Denmark (2018) Collins was included in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2015 and the John Moore Painting Prize in 2016. Collins work included in the Simmons and Simmons Collection and can be found in important private collections in UK, Europe, America, Canada and New Zealand.

Artist Page at Encounter

James Collins 'Deltas'