Jacob Collins: Rediscovering the American Landscape, The Eastholm Project

This publication celebrates one painter's exploration of the American landscape, and shares preparatory drawings, oil sketches, and finished works of art to illustrate the artist's journey. The end result - a 10 foot masterpiece entitled The Hen Islands from Eastholm (on the island of Vinalhaven, Maine) - delivers the knock-out punch at the end of the book. The Eastholm Project is a culmination of Collins' numerous visits to specific locales on Vinalhaven, planned at different times of the day and in changing seasons, during which Collins found himself rediscovering the American landscape by connecting with the land. Rather than approaching his subject through the lens of impressionism or abstraction, Collins found himself studying, in great detail, each of the unique and particular components that constitute the landscape. In his essay, David Dearinger notes that, as an accomplished classical-realist painter of the figure and nudes, Collins uses his careful study of drawing, superb draftsmanship, and his deep understanding of human anatomical structure in painting these landscapes. For Collins, writes Dearinger, anatomy itself proved to be the catalyst for epiphany. This was not only the anatomy of the body, although that is basic to Collins s painting, but the anatomy of all things, solid, liquid, or ethereal: rocks and soil, leaves and wood, wind and water. It was this, especially, that made the Eastholm project a journey of discovery of method and technique and of rediscovery of landscape and nature for the artist. Further, Dearinger's essay contextualizes Collins body of work by likening him to past greats including John Frederick Kensett, Jasper Cropsey, Thomas Cole, and William Trost Richards, amongst others.