Blood and White is a series that uses a specific color symbology as a means to
interpret diseases of the brain and internal organs. Through the indirect
abstractions McCollom wishes to represent the quiet panic of the disordered mind
and the beautiful decay of the diseased body.
The paintings are made using acrylic paint, oil paint, varnish, ink and watercolor on
synthetic paper. Employed is a limited palette of neutral colors and red. Each color
has a supreme symbolic meaning. Red always represents the physical body—blood,
viscera, decay, and visual physicality of the body itself. The neutral warm and cool
beiges represent the outward flesh, the reality of the world and the prison of the
body. The anfractuous nature of the intestines is sampled in the deliberately curling
strokes, and the pooling of the various flesh colored materials is meant to recall
medical images. White, the most sacred color, is always about the existential void.
White is the unknowable space that the mind contemplates. The whiteness of the
paper always surrounds the painted image, so that each one is immersed in the
chaos of the mind and appearing as a religious icon. The work however, though its
conceptual matter is rooted in the presence of body and mind related distress, is
meant to be a visual experience of beauty. Reframing the human reaction to disease
with disgust into one of curiosity is a primary objective within the work.
The paintings are corporeal and existential in nature; reacting to the body, the
greater reality, and the existential space that is explained in theory by philosophers,
theologians, and mystics while exploring a personal existential pathology— a
physical fear reaction to meaninglessness. Blood and White interprets the internal
body, external reality, and the mysterious unknowable aspects of existence.
