Troy Collins paints “wet on wet,” squirting oil pigment from a caulking gun onto his canvas, sometimes picking it up off his palette with his hands and applying it directly, then moving it around with his palette knife. The result, which he has only a few days to accomplish before the paint dries, is a scene of great vitality. Lights and darks play against one another in his forest scenes and light reflects off the richly textured surface of the paintings, adding further to their vibrancy.
Paths of Promise, oil on canvas, 24 x 48”
He returns often to scenes of aspen trees, each of which he describes as having its own personality. He eagerly responds to the infinite variety of the divinely inspired landscapes of the mountain West.
In Paths of Promise,a 2-by-4-foot canvas, the bright yellow leaves of fall aspens contrast with the distant blue lake and mountain seen from a path in the woods. Like his friend and mentor, Robert Moore, Collins applies myriad colors in the foliage and in his construction of the tree trunks—revealing themselves up close yet melding in our eyes as an impressionistic representation of the forest.
Spring Aspen, oil on canvas, 24 x 24”
Returning to record Spring Aspen, his palette changes from the riotous color of fall to the subtle colors of reemerging life. The pinks and yellows of the misty light recede into the dark greens and blues of the depth of the forest.
Just as each aspen expresses its own personality while growing up out of a huge communal root system, viewers of Collins’ paintings respond in their own way, encouraged by the artist “to experience a flood of powerful emotions, to feel the energy that flows through me as I put brush to canvas.”
Under the Big Sky, oil on canvas, 26 x 60”
His paintings have resonated with the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival, which named him featured artist in 2022 and have been shown in the Montana and California state capitols, the Pentagon, the United States Capitol and in U.S. embassies.
His most recent work will be shown in the exhibition The Journey at Montana Trails Gallery in Bozeman, May 1 through 31. —
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