For Rafael Collazo, who has an exhibit of paintings at the Secaucus Public Library and Business Resource Center this month, art is a hobby. But it is also, in a very different sense, a profession. And he is perhaps uniquely qualified to understand the psychological aspects of putting paint on canvas.
For almost 25 years, Collazo has worked as an art therapist with the Meadowview Psychiatric Hospital in Secaucus, seeing groups of eight to 12 patients at a time.
“When I’m having a session with a group of patients, I first have them meditate,” he said. “If a patient tells me, ‘I can’t paint,’ I say, ‘Let’s go back to your childhood,’ and I’ll bring them to the days when he was a child and he cannot deny he did a sketch. And then it pushes them to think, ‘Oh yeah, I remember when I did this and that.’ ‘You remember that? Put it in a drawing. Let me see how it comes out.’”
Patients often express doubts about their abilities as artists. “I show them different,” he said. “Since they feel that they had no talent, it makes them feel proud of themselves. And that to me is an inspiration that I get joy out of.”
Other times Collazo shows artworks to the patients for their reactions. “If a patient can sit here and look into that and start picking out images of things that they project and see, then it tells you something,” he said.
“Some people, they copy from something and they try to paint it. I’d rather be more creative and do it from my mind.” –Rafael Collazo
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Visualizing and projecting
Collazo’s exhibit at the library consists of 15 works spanning five decades and two types of media. His acrylic paintings are pure abstracts, vibrant swirls of color and design. His oils are typically more representational, incorporating recognizable images amidst abstract collages.
“It’s what you visualize in your mind and you project and put it on canvas,” he said. “Some people, they copy from something and they try to paint it. I’d rather be more creative and do it from my mind.”
Among the oils in the exhibit are “Mother and Child,” painted upon the birth of his 19-year-old son; “The Revolution,” created in the 1970s with contemporary imagery to represent “peace, love, and power”; and “Four Musicians.”
“I think that’s a tough painting,” he said of the latter. “If you play an instrument you can go into it. You can relate to it a lot better than somebody who has no idea about music.” A jazz and Latin music fan and former xylophone player, Collazo took several months to paint the 72 x 60-inch work.
Acrylics are smaller and take less time. “Because a palette knife is faster,” he said. “You have to move fast because the acrylic paint dries real quick.”
Describing his abstract “The Ocean,” he said, “Basically I would concentrate on the ocean and whatever comes through my visual perception, that’s what I start doing. I don’t have a picture [beforehand]. I start with the dark colors first, then light afterward. Because it’s not as difficult to blend the colors then.”
Art in the streets of 1960s NYC
Born in Puerto Rico, Collazo came to the states as a baby with his mother and two siblings after his father, a well-to-do lawyer, passed away. Settling in New York City on 133rd Street and then later in the Bronx, the budding artist made his way regularly down into the Village in the 1960s, where a fertile artistic and cultural scene was blooming.
“I used to do art shows in the streets and if I was invited to go into a gallery I would do a show in a gallery,” he said. Focusing on his artwork, he decided to leave the city in 1974 and attended Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, then went on to get his masters degree in art at Columbia.
Collazo didn’t start out with the intention of becoming an art therapist, or even an artist, for that matter. “My goal was to be an art teacher,” he said. “But in the process when I was taking psychology, my psych teacher approached me and said, ‘You have the talent and you’re doing well in psych, why don’t you combine them and become an art therapist?’ ” And so a new career was launched.
Listing Picasso, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, and Diego Rivera among his inspirations, Collazo is currently working on a series of more realistic paintings. “I have one that is two roosters fighting,” he said. “And then I have two African faces that I’m working on. And also I’m doing a seascape. I move from one to another because it becomes boring. So I try to avoid that.”
His current exhibit can be seen until the end of the month in the Panasonic Room on the second floor of the library, 1379 Paterson Plank Road.
Art Schwartz may be reached at arts@hudsonreporter.com.