Meet Robin Colodzin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Robin Colodzin.

Robin, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’ve always been drawn to color and texture. I can still picture an inchworm I saw as a child when I was laying in a hammock watching its bright green patterned body dangling in the air as it spun its thread from overhead leaves.

Growing up outside of Washington, D.C., I would spend many a day wandering around the National Gallery, particularly the East Wing which housed modern art. But actually creating art seemed like it was for famous people in museums, those born with “natural talent”. I played around with collage, as we all learn to cut and pasting early, and it was fun to mix and match from existing images that spoke to me, to arrange. But I did not pursue art with any seriousness until much later.

After starting out in human services, working in a psychiatric hospital and as a research assistant, I stumbled into web programming in the early days of the internet. Learning as I went, I rode the internet boom of the mid to late 90’s, working crazy hours through several startup companies. After 15 years as a consultant, I have been a software engineer at MIT for the last 11 years.

While I continued to play around with collage, both digital and on paper, it wasn’t until I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2007 that I got more serious with art. There is something about facing mortality that makes you ask yourself, what do I really care about? What makes me happy? After I returned to health, I took a week-long immersive collage workshop. I fell in love with playing with paper and texture and color all over again, and have since then made it a central activity in my life.

My most recent solo show was a series of work based on an Emily Dickinson poem at Rockport Art Association and Museum called “Embracing Contradiction”. I’m currently working on a series related to the human body – the experience of living in a body is universal, and yet differences in physicality can lead to us feeling separate.

Has it been a smooth road?
Although I did not have the traditional background in the arts, I have studied with some fabulous artists (Jonathan Talbot, Jesse Reno, Katherine Chang Lui) who have influenced me, shared their wisdom and experience and in general, helped me take the next steps along my way.

An art practice can be such a solitary thing, and I have had ups and downs in staying motivated through the vagaries of inspiration and energy. Being serious about making art meant I really needed to commit to the practice as I would a job. I carve out specific times to be in the studio. A major step for me was getting studio space outside of my home.

I share a space in Gloucester with four other artists, and the camaraderie and community is invaluable. Balancing work, other activities and art has also been a challenge. I’m tremendously fortunate in my employer, as MIT has provided me with the stability and the flexibility to make art, allowing me to work part-time and telecommute one day a week.

I often stumble up against the gap between my intentions for a painting, what I want it to express, and where it actually goes. I prefer to work in a state of openness, curiosity, impulsivity and expressiveness. I am not a planner. Yet I do typically go into a painting with an idea or mood I wish to express. Sometimes these two things mesh well, others not so much. I’m not sure this is actually an obstacle, rather it is an integral tension within the process of art-making.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
My work is a combination of painting and collage. It emerges from the play between the representational and the abstract, structure and impulse, dissonance and harmony.

Favoring bright colors, movement and texture, I work in acrylic, building up layers with found images and objects, pencil and pastel. The result is often a work that feels atmospheric, with some level of chaos giving way to order through the pattern, color and theme.

I am a member of the Copley Society of Arts, the National Association of Women Artists and the Rockport Art Association and Museum, and show regularly on Newbury Street in Boston at the Copley Society and in Rockport, as well as at juried shows nationally and internationally.

In October my work will be in a show on the Lower East Side in Manhattan as part of the National Association of Women Artist’s 129th Annual Members.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.colodzin.com
• Email: robin@colodzin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robincolodzin/

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