Monica, 2014-15, acrylic on linen, 60" x 38"
Knobby Knees, Travis Collinson’s second
solo exhibition of paintings and drawings at Maloney Fine Art, is a new body of
work; a series of portraits using family, friends and colleagues painted with a
signature style of simplified form and pure color, providing insight into the
intimacy shared between the artist and his subject. Collinson started as an
illustrator/cartoonist, creating comic book narratives within the frame. An
emphasis on drawing is underscored in his work. Each of his subjects, seemingly
devoid of expression and in a state of anomie, are depicted with large heads
attached to bodies cut off at the knees—distortions of form and space,
compressed as if swaddled within the frame. Through this compression, they
become highly expressive, gesticulative figures of personal
emotions and spiritual truths.
Conceived as a series, these artworks
are a continuation of Collinson's investigation of the work of other artists,
primarily those whose portraits are recognized as their legacy, like Jean
Auguste DominIque Ingres, Édouard Vuillard, and contemporary artists such as
Alice Neel, Alex Katz and Marlene Dumas. His interest also lies in the personas
that an artist takes on; in this series he focused primarily on the persona of
Andy Warhol, known for his opaque, non-persona often likened to that of a
zombie. The title of the series, Knobby
Knees points not only to where his depictions of people end within the
frame, but also draws reference to the Nabis group of artists: Maurice
Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Paul Sérusier. Pronounced
nah-BEE and derived from a Hebrew word meaning prophet, the Nabis artists
each took on a different persona within the group. Collinson imagines himself
as the Nabi of the Empathetic Portrait, looking to
interior spaces and to artists' internal thoughts and experiences as refuges
from the modern world.
Travis Collinson has been featured in group exhibition
throughout the country most recently in Look at me: Portraiture from Manet
to Present at Leila Heller Gallery in New York and a solo exhibition
at Dominican University titled Narcolepsy in Pink. He was also featured
in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive exhibition Hauntology and
is included in their permanent collections. He currently resides in San
Francisco, California.
