Martin Collins Biography

1964, England ?

Established UK-born, Thailand-based painter and photographer, Martin Collins takes a very contemporary approach to his preferred mediums of photography and painting.

Martin received his training at the Salisbury Art College and at the Portsmouth University, specializing in painting, though also doing courses and work in photography, film and 3D work.

He worked as an artist in a studio group in Bristol and showed in group and individual efforts before relocating to Barcelona in 1989 where he lived and exhibited for nearly a decade.

Invited to an international artist residency in New York in 1998, he relocated and worked there for two years showcasing his oil and mixed media pieces in Soho, Brooklyn, Williamsburg and Philadelphia.

Martin Collins has spent the last five years living and working in Thailand where he continues to work with both paintings and photography.

Details on his recent SHIFTING BUILDINGS: BANGKOK PHOTO SERIES:

In New York and Bangkok he has been attracted to the skyscraper, the modern architecture, and their abstract/formal and painterly possibilities. His recent large-scale photographs of the hyper modern buildings of Bangkok are rich, mysterious and painterly evocations of the hidden beauties where the ancient and the modern meet. He delights in finding details that look and feel like modern abstract paintings, but which retain a cooler, harder edge, combining expressive colour and a formal elegance. Martin's earlier colorful semi-abstract paintings and collage used the city as symbol and figure, to find a language of expression. He has a talent for finding the strange, the expressive and beautiful hidden details in the urban scene.