Colson was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in Bakersfield, California,[1][2] in the nearby suburb of Oildale with his parents and two brothers Doug and Jeff, who is also an artist.

His father Lewis Colson was a social worker but was also a skilled mechanic and inventive with makeshift repairs and adapting materials to new uses – which inspired his son's appreciation of the ordinary and the rejected.

The industrial environment of the Bakersfield/Oildale area, and its accompanying attitudes and outlook, also affected Colson – particularly in its contrast to the large urban/cultural centers he would later inhabit as an artist.

[3][4] Colson's diagrams and maps speak to the detached, abstract quality of much human analysis, at the same time smuggling social critique into each work.

[citation needed] Colson has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Sperone Westwater (New York), Patrick Painter Inc. (Los Angeles), Galerie Konrad Fischer (Düsseldorf), Gian Enzo Sperone (Rome), Galleria Cardi (Milan), Kunsthalle Lophem (Bruges, Belgium), Baldwin Gallery (Aspen), Krannert Art Museum (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and the Lannan Museum (Lake Worth, Florida).