Jason E. Collinge

Beyond the Pane (8.5 x 11 inches: Acrylic on Paper)

The Candle (9.5 x 10 inches: Acrylic on Canvas)

The Flower Seller (8.5 x 11 inches: Acrylic/Mixed Medium on Paper)

The Silhouette (20 x 23 inches: Lithograph Print/Ink on Paper)

Published on the cover of the 1998 spring edition of UBC's English Student Society magazine, Roots, this piece is one of my favourites as it expresses the almost haunting quality of the silhouette.  The figure of the scarf-wearing woman starkly outlined against an unknown light source evokes feelings of mystery while the resulting shadows heighten a sense of foreboding.  The absolute darkness of the shadow provides a reverse sense of movement almost as if the hand-shaped shadow were not being cast by the figure and moving away from it, but rather, as if something dark and sinister were moving from the viewers' vantage point into the piece itself, reaching out to the figure in the light.

The Umbrella I (8 x 10 inches: Pen & Ink on Paper)

Also known as "Kasa", which is the Japanese word for umbrella.  This particular piece was rendered entirely from the imagination in the year 2000 while Jason was living and studying in Japan, and yet, while strolling from Ikebukuro to Arakawaku, one might encounter a lane, which appears as if it could have been the inspiration for the piece. “Umbrella I” (aka: “Kasa”) is imbued with an expression of the artist’s sensibility.  His streakings and scumbles are laid in with telling accuracy in the place best calculated to set the atmosphere, stirring water to life and illuminating the setting.  Like the works of Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891), Jason's pen moves over the image in wild arabesques, pausing to lay in a dense tangle of scumbled cross-hatching while avoiding other areas, which then stand out as glowing zones of light.  Displaying mastery in capturing plays of light, he suggests contours in the reflections on the water.  With a few almost randomly placed horizontal lines, the limpidity of the water is complete, arrestingly displaying the overcast lustre of the sky on the water.  Such strokes had to strike the correct balance between those pertaining to the water and those pertaining to the radiance of the sky.  A few strokes of the artist’s pen over the mark or under it and the balance would have been lost.  If he had rendered the image with too many lines, he would have reduced the water to a plain; he would have lost all sense of the liquidity of its surface.  On the other hand, if he had not employed enough lines, he would have rendered the surface overly snowy, abolishing any sense of its movement.

The Umbrella II (11 x 14 inches: Pen & Ink on Paper)

Render in the year 2000, "The Umbrella II" currently hangs in Doctor Okada's office at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) in Tokyo, Japan, where Jason attended a one year program of study prior to his first marriage.  His time there helped him to develop a better understanding of the country, the language, the people, and the culture.  It also helped to open him up to the many different ways there are to do things in this world.  Most importantly though, it gave him a better understanding of himself and the direction he wanted to take his life and his art.