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  "Mother and Daughter"

  • Details

    Black Folk Art

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  • Biography

    Leon Collins Birthdate Unknown

    Leon Collins (Texas Artist)


    • Leon Collins Birthdate Unknown


      “The inspiration comes from my great, great grandmother...the will comes from God.”

      Leon Collins was born in Galveston.  At the age of four, he was sent to live with relatives in Baton Rouge.  At eight he moved to Beverly Hills, California to live with his mother. Each summer he was sent to Brazoria, Texas to stay with his great-great-grandmother, “Big Mama.”

      “Big Mama,” who lived to be 114, told him stories which he recorded in his Big Chief notebook. When Leon’s mother passed away, Leon moved from California to Navasota, Texas where his mother’s sister lived.

      “If God gives me my sight back, I’m going to start painting again.”

      For two years Leon’s daughter Molly Bee was his caretaker when he was afflicted by brain cancer in 2005. In 2007, his sight returned. He kept his promise to God.

      Before returning to his art, Leon spent time as a picker of antiques. One antique store saw some of Molly Bee’s paintings and quickly sold them at his shop. Both Leon and Molly Bee were quickly in the art business. Word of their “folk” art quickly spread. Their paintings hang from coast to coast. Recently Rice University recognized their art with the exhibit "The Color of Life."

      Of his artwork, Leon Collins said: "Ninety percent of my work comes from God and Big Mama.”

      Leon’s and Molly Bee’s Updates:
      Leon and Molly Bee Collins have exhibited at the Main St. Fort Worth Arts festival.

      That opening is special for two reasons. This was a father / daughter exhibition, and this is their first show in an art gallery. The Texas artist’s work is from their hearts and imaginations. Neither is trained as an artist, instead their paintings are "recollections” of stories, events, places, characters and ideas brought to life in brilliant color.
       
      Information for the Festival read: "Leon’s need to paint came about because of an “unusual life situation. "One morning Leon lost the ability to speak and his sight. For two years he lived in darkness and fear. He never lost his faith though. Miraculously both returned at the same time. It was at that moment he decided to paint “to keep the darkness away.” His daughter, Molly Bee, encouraged him to paint his poetry and that is why she is the light of his life.

      Molly Bee acquired her nickname at the age of two. Named after Leon’s great-great grandmother’s sister, the first Molly Bee lived to be 119 and died in 1970. Her first memory was of seeing her parents chained together at a slave auction. She lived a rich, full life that she shared with Leon. It was these stories that Molly Bee began to paint in her own style at the age of nine.
      Source:
      "Leon Collins," Old Art Guy, 

      ______

      My friend and neighbor Leon Collins does a kind of folky-edgy/borderline unsettling art and cannot keep his work in stock. Leon produces art like a madman with a gun to his head. He paints an average of at least one painting a day. A LARGE painting. That includes prep work and framing and annoying me occasionally when he gets restless. He does not have time to think a thought. He paints what he sees, what he dreams, what he remembers, anything that comes to his mind. There is often no symbolic theme, no deep story behind his works, no mission, no central message; A little girl avoids the jaws of an alligator, a man ducks his wife’s rolling pin, black women sail through a cotton field dragging enormous sacks… A crazy looking bird watches… you don’t know what it is… He is as purely stream of conscious as I have ever known.



      This composition is very tame for Leon, who often paints ghoulish characters overtaking expressive female forms, or black men and women in chains, suffering and enduring, often with allusions to Black Magic.

      Smothered in approval and acceptance, Leon is even more addicted to the action … the thrill of painting and selling.  He has no website, no business card. No agent. And he has sold thousands compared to my scores, just painting on the sidewalk in Navasota, Texas. His highest art actually begins when he begins to talk about the paintings… then he is at his most creative. Leon is nothing if not the biggest, the most talented salesman and storyteller in the County. But his verbosity is matched only by his impatience.

      Almost everything Leon Collins does is the antithesis to whatever any artist or professor or knowledgeable person has ever told me. And yet his sales outstrip whatever might be second. We talk all the time about the hows and whys... Leon's work and its success is a perfect storm, the juxtaposition of local color, black culture, popular fantasy, and the white need to prove something. He is thriving purely because he offers a product that hits this culture right between the eyes… and they do not even know why.  Ever since Picasso's Guernica, art has denied the soul. But when people meet Leon Collins, they seem to discover theirs. He is the high priest of racial atonement, and his sidewalk easel the confessional. And he has won thousands of converts.

      And yet amazingly, against all workshops and lectures about marketing to the contrary, his success is completely dependent on word of mouth.

      He came to an art studio over thirty years ago, and explained he was an artist and wanted to pursue an art career, the studio took an interest in him and encouraged him. At the time another black artist, David Woods was setting the brush on fire with his black genre art, and I knew there was room for more. Then later one day I met him walking down the street, (he never drives, never had a car, ever) and he was carrying some antique fire buckets he wanted to sell. He was not painting, but had found he could make out better as an antique "picker." I purchased quite a bit from him over the years, always talking about his talent, and him pretty much ignoring my advice.

      Now it is the other way around.

      Then around twenty years ago another artist, Junior Tenneyson came up with an idea that inspired Leon and soon he was exhibiting in Bryan and even Dallas. You may wonder what inspires him, and it is simple: making money. His black and white ink drawings sold pretty well... better than me for sure. Then he got bored with it and set aside painting for several years and went back to antique picking. When his daughter Molly, whom I have known since she was a little monkey that would climb me like a tree and take off my glasses, began to paint several years ago, he picked it up again. Especially when he saw how well people received her work. Leon has always loved the action of trading. And he responds to friendly competition too.

      He and Molly began. They painted on boards, doors, even over other artworks.

      Leon has had a ball. He has never gotten all wrapped up in art talk or concern about materials or framing or anything. His may be the most pure, unpretentious art I have seen made. He gets a thought, and within hours it is drying in the sun. His works are composed without much research or visual resources, and he depends a great deal on his imagination and his personal experience. If he finds an old closet door, or a canvas screen, he paints on it. One day he is painting bluesmen, the next cowboys and Indians. One day Texas missions, the next day slaves in bondage. He does whatever appeals to him, unrestrained by the academic structure of design, drawing, or proportion. Or "good taste." If his colors seem garish and his subjects edgy, then too bad. That's what he did that day, no apologies. The off-the-wallness of his work seems to be part of the charm. He makes no pretense about what he makes or what it might be worth.

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