Colin Rhodes is an Anglo-Australian artist, writer and educator. He grew up in a coal-mining community in the North of England, which imparted a lifelong fascination with the interactions of industrial and natural landscapes and a desire to escape. He works in a range of media, principally drawing, painting, printmaking and constructed objects. He has been making brush and ink drawings using Chinese materials for nearly a decade, which has also influenced his other working methods. There is a strong commitment to the human figure in his art, exploring empathic interactions. His compositions come from the imagination, led by the subconscious. He studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London and Art History and Theory at the University of Essex, but has always pursued art making outside commercial demands. He has worked in art schools since the early 1990s in England, Australia and China. He has exhibited his work internationally, including Australia, South Korea, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. His work is represented in a number of international private collections. He is also well known internationally for his writing on art, in particular on Expressionism, Outsider Art, and more recently on contemporary photography. He is a Contributing Editor for Raw Vision magazine and a regularly writes for other publications. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Art, Jangtze River Scholar and Xioaxiang Scholar in the Fine Arts Academy, Hunan Normal University, China
