The art of Collin Douma
“If nature is everything in the universe except us, are we on the wrong side?”
Art is defiance
against apathy
I live in Catskill State Park, less than a mile from the Ashokan Reservoir, fifty feet from old-growth forest.
The impact of climate change on these woods is impossible to miss. Outside my studio window, the forest dies by degrees, tree by tree, the way everything important disappears while we look somewhere else.
Only two northern white rhinos are left on Earth. Owls are poisoned by the rats they hunt. Moose with ninety thousand tick bites. None of them chose this war. They are the ones losing it. For now.
We decided nature is everything in the universe except us. That hubris will outlast us. Nature has an eternity to recover.
People build economies, empires, fortunes, families, and art, all in defiance of mortality. The moment we decided nature is everything in the universe but us, we doomed ourselves from immortality. When we are finally gone, so too will be our memory, and nature will have eternity to recover from our hubris.
I live in Catskill State Park, less than a mile from the Ashokan Reservoir, fifty feet from old-growth forest.
The impact of climate change on these woods is impossible to miss. Outside my studio window, the forest dies by degrees, tree by tree, the way everything important disappears. While we look somewhere else.
Only two northern white rhinos are left on Earth. Owls are poisoned by the rats they hunt. Moose with ninety thousand tick bites. None
of them chose this war. They are the ones losing it. For now.
I believe we are nature. My art is defiance against apathy.
A Cautionary Art Exhibition
by Collin Douma
United Fauna
Eco Surrealism
Watercolors & Inks 2011-
United Fauna envisions a world where animals have adapted human technology to survive environmental collapse. Whales armored with submarines, armadillos armored as tanks, dragonflies outfitted with helicopter parts. Each piece imagines nature's retaliation against humanity's ecological destruction.
Eco Surrealism for the Anthropocene era.
In drawings and newly minted mixed-media sculptures, Douma fuses animals with salvaged machines to create a speculative bestiary shaped by climate anxiety, industrial debris, and ecological resistance.
Peter Aaron, Chronogram, Feb 26
UF3D
Mixed Media
2025-
UF3D
Like battlefield improvisation, these hybrid beings transform human waste into instruments of resistance and survival. Sculptures made of the very debris animals might scavenge in a post-collapse world. Using mixed media including acrylic putty, acrylic paint, metal and found objects.
Drawing From Life
Watercolors & Inks
1992 -
I first noticed it on the Toronto subway: adults sitting together in silence, nobody presenting or performing or preaching. This communal quiet is remarkably rare in life. I've found it in only two other places: Quaker meetings and life drawing workshops. I haven't returned to Quaker circles since moving to New York, but I've never stopped drawing. For me, it's communal meditation, not art. My Algonquin College professor, Anne Morgan, saw something in my watercolors and set me on a thirty-year path of silence in color and zen. Thank you, Anne.
Null Flag
Vinyl, Metal, Cotton. 2025
In a time when every emblem is charged with meaning, Null Flag offers a radical alternative: a flag that demands no allegiance, dictates no belief, and defines no viewer. Instead, it becomes a window reflecting what each person brings to it.
For some, it may symbolize transparency and honesty. To others, it could stand for absence or rejection, a refusal to participate in the endless cycle of symbols that define and divide us. It might be seen as a placeholder for what could be, or the embodiment of pure potential.
The deepest truths are found not in what is declared, but in what is left unsaid.
Vinyl, Cotton, Metal 2025
Skyline traces the evolution the NYC silhouette across six generations, from the 1920s to the 2020s. Each form marks a moment when the city looked up and decided to go higher. It’s ambition cast in shadow. A hundred years of reaching, falling, and starting again. The shapes shift, but the urge stays the same: to leave a mark. To matter. To be seen from a distance, space and time.
Vinyl, Cotton, Metal 2025
Null Flag
Vinyl, Metal, Cotton. 2025
In a time when every emblem is charged with meaning, Null Flag offers a radical alternative: a flag that demands no allegiance, dictates no belief, and defines no viewer. Instead, it becomes a window reflecting what each person brings to it.
For some, it may symbolize transparency and honesty. To others, it could stand for absence or rejection, a refusal to participate in the endless cycle of symbols that define and divide us. It might be seen as a placeholder for what could be, or the embodiment of pure potential.
The deepest truths are found not in what is declared, but in what is left unsaid.
Null Flag
Vinyl, Metal, Cotton. 2025
In a time when every emblem is charged with meaning, Null Flag offers a radical alternative: a flag that demands no allegiance, dictates no belief, and defines no viewer. Instead, it becomes a window reflecting what each person brings to it.
For some, it may symbolize transparency and honesty. To others, it could stand for absence or rejection, a refusal to participate in the endless cycle of symbols that define and divide us. It might be seen as a placeholder for what could be, or the embodiment of pure potential.
The deepest truths are found not in what is declared, but in what is left unsaid.
Null Flag
Vinyl, Metal, Cotton. 2025
In a time when every emblem is charged with meaning, Null Flag offers a radical alternative: a flag that demands no allegiance, dictates no belief, and defines no viewer. Instead, it becomes a window reflecting what each person brings to it.
For some, it may symbolize transparency and honesty. To others, it could stand for absence or rejection, a refusal to participate in the endless cycle of symbols that define and divide us. It might be seen as a placeholder for what could be, or the embodiment of pure potential.
The deepest truths are found not in what is declared, but in what is left unsaid.
dearly Departed
In private collections
Subway Series
Digital Phone Sketches in Transit