James Collins (b. 1992, Darlington) is a painter whose work is rooted in the physical and material logic of paint — its weight, resistance, and slow transformation.
Working in acrylic, oil, oil bar and pigment on canvas, Collins builds paintings through prolonged processes of layering and reworking. The surface becomes a geological record: dense, encrusted, bearing the full evidence of its own making. His two primary bodies of work — the Lithic Root and Liquid Engineers series — are concerned with forms that are discovered rather than designed. Ancient, structural, and emergent, they arise through sustained physical engagement with the canvas rather than through prior composition.
Collins holds an MA from the Royal College of Art, London (2017) and a BA from Wimbledon College of Art (2015). He has exhibited at Encounter Contemporary, Lisboa; Workplace, London; Warwick Arts Centre; James Fuentes, New York; and the ICA, London, and was included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2015) and the John Moore Painting Prize (2016). His work is held in collections across the UK, Europe, America, Canada, and New Zealand.