Colin Kilian is a visual artist who lives and works in New York City. As he became a painter after years of working in design, his painting style became deeply rooted in drawing and an understanding of visual relationships. He uses this vocabulary to develop new forms and communicate from deeper areas of his consciousness and imagination.

In Ribbon (2013) the perceptual illusion of a fast-moving figure in atmosphere is laid out with broad strokes that shift and move rapidly across the canvas in red, black and gray. Kilian ‘enters’ this atmosphere and syncs it with his internal consciousness. Shutting off all intellectual thought, he weaves empathic, gestural strokes into the fictitious space of the painting to directly convey the phenomena he is interacting with internally. In Untitled 4 (2012) he applies a large, neutral shape to a white canvas and spontaneously reacts to subtle nuances of tone and hue as his imagination dictates, building up contrast and articulation until the form is created.

Kilian graduated from Pratt Institute in 2003. He currently works with painting and designs large-scale sculpture. In late June 2012, he created a collaborative sculptural installation for the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet.

In 2019 Colin Kilian introduced a new series of paintings that were made in Bali, Indonesia and Barcelona, Spain. Consisting primarily of black, red, white and blue, Kilian presents swiftly-changing brushstrokes that suggest instinctive movements. Intermittent punctuations of color create a sense of dynamic, kaleidoscopic depth. Each of these paintings,”share this positive energy and arcane information in a viscerally understood way, removed from any social, cultural or political context.” Each painting in this new series measures 30” x 42”.