Rob Collins:
Robert
Collins was born in Gloucestershire in 1952 and educated at Gloucestershire
College of Art and the Royal College of Art in Kensington. Robert now
lives and paints in Gloucester although his art resides in private collections
worldwide.
"Some of his very best, most vivid landscapes tackle head-on the
eye-tiring, colour-sapping light of the noon day sun. Maybe only mad
dogs and Englishmen go out in it, but if so Collins's sorties have proved
amazingly fruitful. The colour may seem to have drained from The Wildflower
Meadow, or The Light on the River to have eliminated richness and complexity
along with shade. But the effect is superficial. Look again and you
will see the delicacy with which the unseen sun is evoked, the way that
every sparkle on the water is made to tell, the way the white flowers
in the meadow crane above the grasses drawn inexorably by the light
we otherwise hardly register"
JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR, art critic for THE TIMES
