Jeff Collins

Jeff Collins is a fixture in the Edmonton arts and culture communities thanks to the inaugural residency he completed in partnership with the City of Edmonton’s Division of Forestry in 2013. The opportunity appealed to him because, after living in a number of other Albertan cities, he returned to his birthplace of Edmonton specifically for the river valley and the forests. During his term as Artist in Residence, he followed the City’s urban foresters on field trips as they pruned, planted, and maintained Edmonton’s trees and green spaces. He taught classes in oil painting to City of Edmonton employees and completed a series of landscape paintings on location with the foresters, as well as a parallel body of abstract work. These Paintings from the Urban Forest follow from the extensive body of landscape and abstract oils on canvas that he has produced since 1995, and they ask viewers to look at the land they often know well in a different way or to notice things they have never seen before.

Collins has exhibited widely in Alberta, and he has a long history of involvement in Edmonton’s arts community, working with the Alberta Craft Council and the Works Art and Design Festival, and helping to establish ArtsHub Gallery and ArtsHub Housing Cooperative, where he currently lives.