Artist

Colin Colorful arrived on this planet 45 years ago in deepest, darkest colonial Africa in the small town of Kitwe, in a country called Northern Rhodesia – that no longer exists – a part of which is now known as Zambia. Into this black and white world, a colorblind and tone deaf artist was born. Unfortunately his parents confused one of his first conceptual works, a smattering of his fecal matter over his crib and the walls of his room, as nothing more than a nuisance, whereas in fact it was his primal art scream (forgive the pun) which he then buried deeply for another 35 years to join the other rats in that relentless race through the maze of life, to win it seems, not much more than some very fancy cheese.

Dropping the Colorful tag and taking on his parents alias, Colin lived the alternative lives of a shy boy, a spotty virginal adolescent, a lance corporal of a fascist anti-aircraft brigade in the war against communism, a university radical and a cadre of Nelson Mandela’s “communist” terrorist organization the ANC, a boiler room salesman, a futures trader, a chickens feet and sheep’s head meat trader, techno-hippy psychonaut, a phone sex purveyor, world traveler of 150 cities and 35 countries, a pioneer of computer advertising, a billion dollar multinational media senior executive, an Internet advertising pioneer, a creative director geek and in his last few meters from the Rat Race winning line, as a Google hacker /marketron (as a Google geek, who looked far more like a robot than Colin ever did, once aptly commented to him during a Google HQ infiltration).

In 1998, Colin walked into the Sensation exhibition at the Tate Modern in London and Colin Colorful was reborn. Hirst, Emin, Mueck, Ofili, the Chapmans blew that rat facade away and Colin decided to take on his former name and destiny asap. Thus began ten years of personal part-time artistic study, building on ten years of numerous spiritual meditative practices as well as personal development practices from Tim Leary John Lilly to spiritual “cult” trainings at the Osho Rajneesh ashram in India, to astral travel, to courses in based on Werner Erhardts controversial Sensitivity training, to Anthony Robbins and finally hypnotism. After reaching enlightenment and frankly being bored with the blackness of that inner space Colin was contacted psychically by Prof Herman Bean, who opened up a whole new artistic and inner world to him. Time, countries, spaces, people and places intervened and it was not until the end of 2008, that Colin Colorful finally emerged, as a fully formed African Australian contemporary artist on the banks of Sydney harbour waterfront, near one of the New Imaginist Imaginariums, in Australia, with his delightful wife Jasia, and daughters India-Sioux and Mischa Zahara.

Colin is now a full time artist and founder member of the New Imaginists, a group of highly successful artists, philosophers, critics, writers and filmmakers that are launching a post-reality contemporary art movement, that aims to bring out the inner world of the imagination as an art medium in itself. In today’s world of nihilistic cynicism where craft and art philosophy’s progress has finally been slowed to a crawl by the limitations of our current physical reality, the only logical place to explore now artistically is within the actual imagination.

As a rabid atheist Colin loosely associates and aligns himself with the transhumanist movement and his art practice is a study of the future and its forwarding, socially and aesthetically. The past is gone, it wasn’t that great – let’s leave it there and work together to create a future from an empty present. There was more than a billion to one chance you would be been born and especially at this time of amazing progress here now to read this message – so anything is possible – now let’s go within and together dreampaint ourselves beyond the Singularity and into utopia – ytf would we envision anything else?