Patrick Collins (1911–1994) was one of Ireland's foremost painters of the 20th century. He was elected HRHA (Honorary Council of the Royal Hibernian Academy) in 1980 and a member of Aosdána in 1981 and had a major retrospective exhibition by the Irish Arts Council (Cork, Belfast, Dublin) in 1982. Several solo exhibitions followed, including a Retrospective at Sligo Art Gallery in 1985. Two years later, Patrick Collins was the first artist to be honoured with the accolade SAOI by Aosdána in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Ireland. In 1988 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Trinity College, Dublin. His paintings have been exhibited widely in Ireland and in Europe, and are held in many public and private collections of Irish painting worldwide.[1][2][3][4][5]
"Patrick Collins has made a unique contribution to painting in our time by his power to evoke an aspect of Ireland which captures not only the primary image of the place and the people, but also its spiritual content. His grey-blue landscapes contain images of households, farms and figures, which emerge with a curious imprecise shape that is ultimately seen to be marked by folk-memory and by legend. Like a poet with words, his images penetrate areas beyond exact statement or description – they belong to the area of suggestion and imagination which cannot be identified outside the realm of his own idiom."
(James White, Chairman of the Arts Council in the foreword to "Patrick Collins" by Frances Ruane[1])
Life
Biographical outline
1911
Born in Dromore West, Co. Sligo, Lived in Riverstown and Sligo.
