Peter Acheson : On Colin Stinson

“Mutation rather than invention, seems to define modernity.”
(from Colin Stinson's notebooks – original source unknown)

In his essay, “Painting of a Rice Cake”, the zen master Dogen refutes the maxim that a painted rice cake cannot satisfy hunger. He states, “.to penetrate one thing is to penetrate many things.” Thus, when the world (or a painting of a rice cake) is encountered with an undivided mind, everything is equally real. Nature is not only trees, sky, and distant vistas; it courses through the planetary water cycle to our coffee makers and car washes; it jumps electrically through the circuit boards of every PC in every office.

Colin Stinson paints from nature. The nature in question is microcosmic, macro cosmic, organic, and technological: a nature by definition strange, neither reassuring or terrifying, always following a logic that allows energy to flow in the direction of least resistance.

Stinson's paintings depict fields of activity in which the image results from the action of unseen energies. The painted image grows like a coral reef, and becomes an environment for digressions, mutations and the expansion of energy into new and ever growing numbers of forms. Colin's primary image is the cluster, which often grows off a skeletal web of energy lines. Historical precedents include the shimmering abstractions of Guston in the 50's and 60's. Terry Winters' cellular biology is there as well, and looming over all are the archetypal fields of Jackson Pollock.

In the 20th century, painted form buckled under pressure from psychology, which explored inner space, and technology, which explored the tiny scale of atoms and the enormous scale of the Milky Way. Theoretical physics described the structures of nature in increasingly weird terms, mesons, string theory, and charm. Now the wild objects of theory have been harnessed into usable technologies TOOLS, employed in computer games, defense weaponry, space exploration, and the tiny circuits of computers.

By gathering inspiration from subjects as diverse as fluid dynamics and digital technology, Stinson is seeking a language common to all. The paintings from 2002 called Super Strings show cell-like containers under compression and expansion; are they galaxies or atoms? They are caught in mid formation, going where? Becoming what? Everything in Colin's paintings is in the process of becoming, an image of potential form rather than fixed.

What is the relevance of painting in the digital age? As part of the asking, Colin allows as many influences in as possible, from the electrical patterns of video to invisible light from deep space. It is not just that these images are beautiful, but as IDEAS they are useful. He understands that the Hubble telescope as well as the electron microscope are eyes, like the painter's eye, looking into space. His intuition is that on all scales essential nature looks the same. It is an open structure of energy expanding and contracting simultaneously.

Broadly stated, both science and art are acts of imagination. To image worlds that are not available to the naked eye requires not only highly specialized tools, but, more important, imagination. Images from advanced physics, tattoo patterns, snapshots taken of techno looking street graffiti find their way into these paintings. A photograph tucked into a notebook shows a large steel frame supporting an enormous sphere of flowers seen on the street in Yokohama, Japan. The standard judgment of quality counts nothing for Stinson. The question is not, “Is it good art?”, but rather, “How strange is it, how real?” The gaps in cross cultural translation, and the combination of “natural” and “engineered” shatter any light reading of this as a decoration; instead, it becomes for Stinson, evidence of a new consciousness. A new consciousness where control serves as a platform for wildness.

Peter Acheson

New York, 2004

Excerpt from Contemporary Quarterly Volume 3, 2006 : Blur

"The hidden interlacing that makes up matter and moments in the day and 'the way things seem' is constantly changing - it is the improvisation of existence." -Colin Stinson

Colin Stinson's drawings and paintings could belong to the domains of science fiction, CAD, video game design or urban graffiti, as well as to the realm of "Art." All of these are influences on Stinson, as are tattoo art, improvisational music, and theoretical physics.  For many years, he has made paintings and drawings that attempt to depict the fundamentals of physical manifestations and unseen energies that comprise the universe. He believes there is a unifying force among all things, from nature to technology, and has studied explanations of this in physics concepts such as string theory. Some of Stinson's painted forms are like looping strands of pulsing energy, others are mechanical/organic hybrids floating and clustering in black space, and some are multicolored masses seeming to be in the process of becoming structures.  Everything seems to be in motion and evolving at the same time. His colors are vibrant and plastic, as though he has contrived a color code for mapping the non-visible.  Stinson envisions a fantastic reality where matter is in constant flux.

Architecture and Painting

Excerpt from essay : Comfort Foods, Pink Umbrellas, and Gingerbread Houses

Colin's work is a visual smearing as well as aa visceral smearing of energies.  Stripped of color,we understand the visual smearing of a rectilinear field and a curvaceous field in the form of a figure-ground.  The absence of color allows us to understand Colin's use of color as a visceral smearing.  Once replaced, the jarring colors magnify the incomprehensible shifting field of figures: as one traces a line through the painting, the juxtaposition of a dissonant color forces the eye to twitch and jump to a different line in the painting. These spatiotemporal discontinuities produce new mutations, which smear physically disassociated energies together. We try to retrace the line only to end up dazed and confused and inside a new mutation.  The visual smearing gives way to a visceral smearing: an understanding that the work is alive, and it is digesting itself and also us. We are incorporated into the work.

Stacey Murphy

Firm : Marble Fairbanks

New York, 2006