Paul Lamar Collins was born in Muskegon, Michigan in 1936 and raised in Ada, Michigan. He later graduated from Ottawa Hills High School in Grand Rapids. Paul began drawing as a youth and was influenced by the black poet and painter Randy Brown. Brown and Collins eventually went into the advertising business together, forming Ran-Col Associated, where Collins did sign painting. A self taught artist, his break through is said to have been when commissioned to paint the actor Steve McQueen by McQueen’s wife, Neile Adams. Collins became known to the leaders of the Grand Rapids based Amway Corporation, Richard M. DeVos and Jay Van Andel. With their financial backing, he went to West Africa for two years in the early 1970s. The result was the exhibit Black Portrait of an African Journey, in which he depicted the people of Senegal.

In 1975 Collins became the first African American to paint the portrait of an American president. He created an eighteen foot mural depicting Gerald R. Ford’s life, which was permanently installed at the Kent County International Airport in November 1976. Following this, Collins created a piece in the collaborative series, The Great Kings of Africa, which was used in the Budweiser ad campaigns of the Anheuser-Busch Company.

Collins completed the following commissioned collections of works including Black Portrait of an African Journey (Senegal and Gambia), Other Voices: A Native American Tableau (Pine Ridge and Rose Bud Reservation), Children of Harlem (Harlem, New York), Special Olympics (United States), Great Beautiful Black Women (United States), Famous Moments in the History of the United States of America, America At Work, Voices of Israel, Kenya in the Beginning, American Portrait of Japan, Who is Key West, Embargo of the Angels (Cuba), and Portraits of Promise.

Two commissions to create national symbols came to Collins in the 1980s. Coretta Scott King asked Collins to design the Martin Luther King, Jr. Non-Violent Peace Prize Medal and, in 1982, NASA selected Collins to design the logo for the space shuttle Challenger VII.

Collins has served and donated much of this time and his works to local charities, as well as to state, national and international endeavors, such as the United Negro College Fund, Cystic Fibrosis, Black History Month/Black Caucus Foundation in Lansing, Michigan, and the North American Indian Center.

Collins has a long list of exhibit credits and awards. His works hang in private and corporate collections, several in Michigan, but also throughout the world.