Victoria Anne Collis is a Painter and Printmaker who resides in rural Somerset. Her love of creative expression began with an early childhood memory of making potato prints with her mother, sisters and brother. After her first steps into education began at a Convent School, Victoria furthered her creative aptitude by graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Arts at Bath Spa University and a Master’s degree in Fine Art, specialising in Printmaking at Aberystwyth University, Wales in 2019.
It was during her time at Aberystwyth that her work began to reflect and become inspired by the changing and varied landscapes that she travelled through, resulting in works reflecting the Welsh and English landscapes.
A residency to Canada in 2019 also inspired a collection entitled Somnium Terr, which is Latin for Dream land. Victoria drew her inspiration from the sleeping land of our native American ancestors, particularly for the Crowsnest Pass area of Alberta Canada. The land was originally frequented by the North American Indians, the Blackfoot tribe.
Her aim was to capture the essence of this landscape…the flow of the waterfalls and the stillness of the mountains.
Painting semi-abstract landscapes, working from direct observation, memory and imagination; my work is free, gestural and expressive. Preferred techniques; drawing, printmaking, etching, drypoint and painting.
Victoria is looking at surface; a play of surface, a tension between the perception of land/sea/sky.
She believes that being an artist is a never-ending journey of communicating with one’s rhythms and channeling these feelings onto paper and with all good images, there is a lyrical narrative that descends from the Romantic School – ‘everything stems from nature.’ This principle I share with fellow kindreds – Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, W.B. Yeats, Alfred Tennyson, and Joni Mitchell.
