Expressions of Love: Bert Collins at Palm Loft Gallery
By Grace Miles, UCSB x Lum Arts Writing Intern
Steps away from the flower-specked dunes and windswept cypresses of Carpinteria State Beach, the Palm Loft Gallery provides an intimate space to celebrate the work of local Californian artists. With stacks of books and musical instruments accompanying the art displayed on the walls, creativity of all kinds finds community at Palm Loft.
Over the years, the gallery’s exhibitions have brought together a diverse range of styles and mediums – oil abstracts, acrylic landscapes, eclectic fusions of pastel and watercolor – and although these works may be varied in outward appearance, there is a particular quality that penetrates the surface of each. For owner and curator, Arturo Tello, it is essential that the art he displays be “genuine in approach,” that the artists are driven by passion and curiosity rather than ambitions of fame, and that, simply, “they are in it for love.”
Bert Collins, Moonlight, acrylic on canvas
With a title that indicates precisely why this show has come to the Palm Loft, Expressions of Love features new paintings from Bert Collins, an Ojai-based artist who has won over 200 awards across a fifty-year career, including the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Ojai’s City Council.
Collins was in her thirties when, at the urging of a friend, she decided to enroll in a local art class. What began as a mellow interest was suddenly transformed into a brilliant love, the enduring strength of which is evidenced by the decades she has spent as both an artist and a teacher.
Though she works primarily with landscapes, Collins has also experimented with abstracts, five of which are featured in Expressions of Love. In her landscape work, Collins is particularly drawn to overgrown country roads, staggering strings of fenceposts and the charming changeability of water – here a serene pond, there a crashing wave, elsewhere a bubbling stream.
Bert Collins, Old Ranch Road, acrylic on canvas
Rendered in delicate blends of pastel and deft strokes of acrylic, Collins’ landscapes offer a warm greeting as the eye roams across scenes of sunlit clouds, clustering trees and mossy river rocks. Most compelling is her treatment of light, from the dappled, cheerful brightness of Old Ranch Road, to the piercing white-gold beam that slices across a calm ocean in Moonlight.
Venturing close to Collins’ paintings, quick flashes of color are often surprising – daubs of blue on a dark cliff face, bolts of lavender in the leafy boughs of a tree – but pull back again, and the hues come together with an ease that echoes the dynamics of nature itself.
Tello fondly describes Collins’ landscapes as “full of feeling,” poignant in a way that is both “soulful and peaceful.” Though these serene landscapes are what Collins is best known for, she has also branched into abstracts, curious to experiment with an entirely different form of art. Playing with bold streaks of turquoise, fiery flares of yellow and orange, Collins delights to “let the colors work together,” and allow emotion to dictate the movements of her brush.
Every show at Palm Loft takes its title from a quote, chosen by Tello, to reflect the art and artist on display. Here, the words of Marc Chagall emphasize the character of Bert Collins’ paintings: “Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” Surely, nothing but love could inspire fifty years of art, and keep an artist painting and teaching with joy and enthusiasm at ninety-two years old.
Expressions of Love featuring new paintings by Bert Collins was on view Dec. 12 to Feb. 7, 2021 at Palm Loft Gallery, 410 Palm Ave. Loft A-1 in Carpinteria.
COVER: Bert Collins, Ojai Oaks, acrylic on canvas
