A Glimpse -Paintings
Skin Horse Paintings
In the Skin Horse and Fractured Perfection Paintings, Collins Physically spends months and years creating two paintings on one canvas... the first is the perfectly imagined figurative horse beautifully layered, and depth filled... to which she then takes a hammer and chisel.... and literally destroys everything...... she then re-assembles and repaints the figurative image anew... but beautifully flawed, like each of us. It is the cracks through which the light enters our lives.
Furious Angels Paintings
With “Furious Angels”, Collins takes her wildly successful “Skin Horse” series to a different dimension.
“Why?” Collins ask, “are Angels depicted throughout history as these cupid-like floating entities with no exterior strength…. wouldn’t Angels, to truly be able to alter lives, to change our historical course….to in no small part [save us], need furious power and focus unmatched?”…. Collins continues “Often we ourselves help others through small acts of kindness… but to overcome powerful obstacles in aid for others, it is only though sacrifice and strength, that we truly change lives… and rise up with Wings fiercely spread in Fury.”
It is this fury and power that Collins brings to this new series, doubling down with massive texture and LED Neon. But rather than being over the top, Collins somehow manages to incorporate these disparate parts into something hauntingly beautiful. Wings break the third wall while her assemblages and layers within the figurative horse are reminders of her friend Robert Rauschenberg [who in Collins most difficult times, provided encouragement when others said the horse as a subject matter could not be contemporary art].
In these works, the layers are created, the figurative horse painted… and then Collins takes chisel, hammer and sander and literally destroys the work. Then Collins creates from the destruction, like a Phoenix, a new entity full of power. Like our own lives, the scars from this battle create another layer of growth, making something perfect in its imperfection.
Furious Angels, are not only that which we aspire to become, but that which has been within us all along, seeking to be awakened.
Pieces of Eight - Unshackled
In These Series of Works - Pieces of Eight, instead of beginning with a blank canvas, Collins begins with eight canvases containing portions of a prior works and images, produced with archival ink... Collins then begins the painting, or actually eight paintings -each of which take on a life of their own, as she layers with historical pages, oil, acrylic, and found objects. Only eight in each grouping of works in the world.
CLOUD PAINTINGS
Clouds, are a constantly changing mirror of our own lives. Collins begins each canvas of her Cloud Paintings with layers of historical pages, intentionally crumpled and repeatedly layered until a wholly unique texture is created.... but this texture is not canvas wide, but rather placed in select areas... forming one of three textures..... pure white.... pure cloud.... and historical pages sanded to create an otherworldly aged surface. Collins then constructs out of paint some of the most difficult images, as the canvas texture, fights against the brush and against logic. What is created is a floating simplicity, that is anything but.
Generation Paintings
Large Scale Heirloom Paintings are what broke Collins into the ranks of the top contemporary artist worldwide. Dating back more than 15 years, these works, often of massive scale, are based on earth toned pages of newsprint that have been aged by the sun, wind and rain. Collins then brings the final element, Fire, by way of moving the resin on the finished layer. Often these works have over one hundred layers.
PIECES OF EIGHT
For Collins multi media Pieces of Eight Constructs, she begins by taking a digital image of one of her significant works, then adding Historical Documents, Letters, all digitally created and then printed on fresh canvas using archival museum quality ink. From this initial canvas, she then creates Eight completely different paintings... each venturing far from the underlying first canvas layer. The name comes from the famed Spanish Silver Coin, the first in the world to be minted with consistent quality of metal and weight in 1497, which quickly became the international currency around the world for hundreds of years...its duration and value so relied upon, that it was even required as payment during the American Revolution some 300 years later. Collins only paints eight of each grouping.
GENERATIONAL PAINTINGS
Collins first became internationally known for her uber-scaled earth toned paintings featuring giant horseheads - layered using papers aged by the elements over years, sun, rain, wind... and historical pages and objects.... something never done before..........The warmth of these paintings somehow enables us to be timeless within our own world, the past and the future colliding. A representation that those that have gone before us and paved the paths are so much a part of us, just as our own actions echo into the lives of future generations. Collins "Generational" Paintings.
Abstract Colorfields-
Earth
The Sheer Beauty and Exuburance of bookpages, layer upon layer, splashed with paint, and nurished with shading from Collins brush combine to create depth filled amazing abstracts. For Collins each bookpage covering hundreds of years of history, carries with it the soul of those who have touched those actual pages over the generations.
Abstract Colorfields-
White
The Sheer Beauty and Exuburance of bookpages, layer upon layer, splashed with paint, and nurished with shading from Collins brush combine to create depth filled amazing abstracts. For Collins each bookpage covering hundreds of years of history, carries with it the soul of those who have touched those actual pages over the generations.
