“We all have our debts to people and places, to the ones who lived to tell. Michael Collins survived the death of painting, to compound the expression. He rose from the depth of the Gulf coast to record the continuing role of the greatness of humanity in all its tragic glory. His is the art of content and information; It is thick and full and rich with the juices of belief.”

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- James Surls is an internationally renowned Modernist artist and preeminent sculptor

Carbondale, Colorado

Edward Lucie-Smith discovered Collins art in his 2007 solo exhibition, entitled “Gardens of Mystery” at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, NM. Inspired, he wrote, “One of the most salient qualities of the art of music is that it is ambiguous - even more ambiguous than visual images seen in isolation and unaccompanied by text. Collins’ art shares this engaging ambiguity. His paintings seem to tell us stories, but fundamentally these are stories we make for ourselves stimulated by the paintings. They activate elements in our imaginations that may not even we know we possess and, by doing so, are made all the more important.”

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- Edward Lucie-Smith, internationally renowned art critic, historian, writer, curator, and broadcaster

London, England

Jim Edwards has written that Collins has painted some of the most spiritual work that he knows of in the 21-century. “Collins’ most recent landscapes and interior and exterior vistas are steamy and smoldering compositions, suggesting some post-apocalyptic moment. His sumptuous paint handling sticks to the framework of very confident drawing underneath.”

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- James Edwards, expert art writer, curator, and authority on American Art of the Southwest

San Francisco, California

Gus Kopriva, has known Michael Collins and his work since the 1980’s, and has curated him within many national and international traveling exhibits, as well as exhibited his work at Redbud Gallery.  He states, “The works of MRC depict visual stories that adroitly transcend passages of time. In the manner of the great Symbolists, Collins portrays political, social, and religious topics in a manner that allows his viewers a vast freedom of personal interpretation. The mysterious landscapes of Collins are beguiling, and his creative use of light is very effective in a positive and hopeful manner. Collins adapts his craft to meet his intent of depicting journeys without an end. His work will long outlast us.”

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- Gus Kopriva, owner of Redbud Gallery in Houston and renowned curator

Houston, Texas

Ken Marvel has represented Michael Collins since 2002. He wrote: “Attempting to introduce the painting of Michael Roque Collins is like trying to describe an aesthetic Big Bang: A phenomenal convergence of beauty-so profound and deep that sometimes, as William Blake would say, it is a “Terrible beauty”. Intense visual energies that propel enigmas and mysteries from the deep within the human consciousness and subconscious. This collision produces images (sparked out of thick paint on the canvases of Collins’ seismic explosions) transcendent spiritual power.”

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- Ken Marvel, owner of LewAllen Galleries

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dr. Alessandra Comini was an esteemed professor for Michael Collins during his MFA term at Southern Methodist University. She wrote: “Encountering Michael Roque Collins’ work is simultaneously a collision and a meditation. Content ignites vibrant form; form reveals forgotten dreams, evokes distant epochs, and unbars private metaphors that slowly, seductively become our own. A major talent on the American and European scenes, Collins embodies the thinking artist who, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, conjures up the continuum of the past as inspiration for the present.”

 

- Dr. Alessandra Comini, American art historian and curator, University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita, Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas