Jonathan Collins – Beat and Counterculture Portraits

Jonathan Collins has an upcoming one-man show of his  “Beat and Counterculture Portrait” series at the Whistler House Museum of Art, in Lowell, Massachusetts opening on Saturday (August 22nd) and up until October 31

In addition to to the entire Portrait series, 36 portraits of the writers in the orbit of the Beat Generation, the show features several paintings of Lowell locations pertaining to Jack Kerouac‘s work, and a few paintings of Kerouac and family never seen before.
The show will be part of and in conjunction with the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festivities and Collins will be on hand (October 10, 2 p.m.) to deliver this year’s Moses Greeley Parker Lecture

A catalog of the show is available and can be purchased from the Museum

Jonathan Collins (in his contribution to the Ginsberg Centennial issue of Beatdom) writes:

“I first met Allen Ginsberg in 1992 at the foot of the Paterson Falls, New Jersey with him reciting Willam Carlos Williams‘ monolithic poem “Paterson”, and a tenor sax blowing in the background. I had a conversation with his long time partner, Peter Orlovsky and the three of us walked across the street to the Paterson museum. Inside were also Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and other poets. I drew Allen as he did a completely spontaneous lecture on “William Carlos Williams and the Poetry of Urban Experience” which was erudite and inspiring.

Afterwards I had a long conversation with Orlovsky bout the Beat group in Tangier and how cheap the rent was then back in the heady days of the ’50s. Ginsberg signed my drawing, amused and made a bubble coming out of his mouth, spewing his mantra, “AH”,and I have it to this day

Thus began a friendship with Ginsberg that lasted until he passed in 1997.

One of my favorite happenings was when we were at the “Beat Culture” exhibit at the Whitney Museum, NYC, where I conversed with Salman Rushdie, Gregory Corso, Alfred Leslie, among many others. Corso grabbed my drawing pad and said, “Hey, Allen,this guy can really draw!”. Allen merely said, “I know”….

When I chose to start my Beat and Counterculture Portrait series in 2023, I painted Kerouac first, then Allen, I knew, first off I must capture the spirit of Allen’s essence, which to me were his eyes and his hands. I also realized he must not be stagnant or too posed but ALIVE and inspired. Referring to his appearance on Firing Line, I did 14 or so drawings of his different moods then approached the watercolor paper, painting first his eyeglasses and eyes andthern on to the expressionist face as Allen excitedly gestured, I remember noticing in all of our talks together the gesture he had of pointing his right index finger in their to make an explicit point, a move he told me he got from Jack Kerouac. The context of what an Allen Ginsberg portrait means to me, and  what I strove to capture, is Allen Ginsberg engaged, enraptured with passion, his eyes aglow, hand gesturing emphatically, to release his unique pathos and visionary poetics to the world.

Simon Warner interviewed Jonathan Collins back in 2024 – here

from back in 2012 some images from his Beat Traveller – New Landscapes exhibition at the Paterson Museum – see also here 

Visit Jonathan Collins’ website here