The Sun Is In Your Eyes, 35″ x 35″, Acrylic on Canvas and Wood Cut Outs
Statement
In a contemporary application of abstraction, the collection of works exhibited in Surrounded by Shapes explores shifts in mentality, as patterns explore ideas of intuition and respond to the use of art as a form of therapy. Signature bold acrylic mark making in the form of enlarged doodles mirror the ritualistic methods for managing obsessive-compulsive disorders, revealing a repetitive way of creating with hard-edge forms. Careful restraint in meticulously painted motifs contrasting pools of thinned pigment reflect a need for order in a controlled way of painting.
Extending line or motif beyond the boundaries of a canvas allows me to find new spatial possibilities when balancing colour and shape. Continuing compositions over canvas edge or in layered wood cut outs, each gesture engages an emotion and illustrative lines are used to reference language, accompanied by colloquial titles in diaristic styles that reference journal entries key to the process of a painting.
Such recycled patterns act as characters amongst the paintings, continually shifting in compositions in search of balance. Obvious and uncomplicated in shape, these marks become elements to be categorised, isolated in paper and wood cut out series, representative of feeling disassociated from society. Investigating the patterns of life, and rituals of an artist, I interpret sound as shape, or scent as colour to form playful compositions. In this spirit, each painting illustrates the patterns of thought, conversation, music, patterns of sleep and of dreaming, translated into picture.
Blurring the distinction between physical painting and graphic design, a digital method is adopted amongst my studies, approaching layers in paintings as though they are layers of digital drawings in Photoshop – to be cropped, altered in saturation or brightness, and adjusted in size. Considered and digital looking, exaggerating the flatness of surface and suggesting the removal of hand, my paintings present a formulaic approach to expressionism in a digital era.
CV
Instagram – @georgecoll_
Email – georgie.mcoll@gmail.com
Upcoming Exhibitions
2021 FUSE, Brighton Regency Town House, Brighton (Curator)
One Person Exhibitions
2021 Surrounded by Shapes, Home Residency, Suffolk
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020 Face to Face, Edward Street Building, Brighton
2019 Symonds Creative, Woollen Mill, Suffolk
2019 Painting Festival 01, University of Brighton, Brighton
2019 Take The Stairs, University of Brighton, Brighton
2018 Skin and Blister, The Con Club, Suffolk
2018 Active Voice, Heretic at Tattoo Club, Suffolk
2018 Final Major Project Exhibition, West Suffolk College
Features
2021 Graduates 2021, George Coll: Fine Art Painting, University of Brighton Blogs
2020 ‘Lockdown inspires Long Melford artist’s abstract designs to raise money for medical workers in battle against coronavirus’, Suffolk Free Press
2020 ‘In conversation with emerging Brighton based artist’, HALT Magazine
2019 ‘Inside the mind of’, 1859 Magazine