Christopher John Hollins

Born in Birmingham, England 1946. Worked in many jobs until becoming a full-time painter and writer. Chris believes we have evolved to possess two distinctly separate forms of perceptual awareness. One way of sensing is learned when we are young through our intelligence and the other inherent through instinct. He states that our mind has evolved to stop us observing objects and events in the old instinctive way, and his idea is that modern art arose because it was realised the traditional ways of working help intelligence overpower our original ability to sense by instinct. He therefore, creates objects in an attempt to reveal art as a way to rekindle this old instinctive experience rather than suppress it. He has published two books on the subject. The Animal Within, and Creative Thinking. At present, he is writing his third volume entitled Art & Evolution: How our Animal Origins made us Creative.

His theory and artwork can be found at

His research papers can be found at

At school, Chris was considered disruptive in class because he kept questioning his teachers rather than accepting their authority. He says he could never believe anyone who tried to tell him intelligence was the only way to understand the world. He believes all our 'learned' ideas drive us away from a natural intuitive way of sensing what confronts us, and only by learning to look without ideas can we glimpse an original insight into how our mind was structuring our powers of perception. Because his ideas were so unconventional he left school at 15 with no formal qualifications, and his views on art remained unrecognised. He found himself pushed into industrial employment on a car production line, and throughout this dreadful period of his life he kept himself going by painting in his spare time. He eventually walked away for it all to become a full-time artist. Chris found work when-ever and where-ever he could whilst formulating his own unique theory of modern art. He now lives and works in solitude from his home in Whitby, North Yorkshire.

Pelt Art, The Spa, Bridlington, England. 12-22 February 2013
Try Not to Think, Shedspace, Whitby, England. April 2014