Skulls with Hats

“The skeletons you see here have a double meaning for Collins, and don’t be fooled, with Collins you are dealing with an experienced artist that is as sophisticated in his meanings as any 14th century artist. These ‘portraits of the dead’ if you will, have their source in a series of paintings of “Women in hats” exhibited in Halifax in 1979. Collins took the series and presents it anew here except the women are now skeletons, better dressed skeletons, better painted skeletons, with eccentric dresses and hats worthy of a kind of painterly couture that take your mind and your view away from the idea of death. The pictures function as Vanitas, a painterly form, that has been a part of the Collins encyclopedic paint box from the beginning. A Vanitas painting is a still life picture in which a skull often appears as well as other symbolic objects that underline the transience of life and the inevitability of our mortality. But Collins’ ever deceiving lusciousness of painting and desire to be in discord with the seriousness of death and therefore with the seriousness of art itself allows you to fulfill the promise of art, to apprehend the joy of life, the joy promised by art.”

Excerpt from ‘A Collins ‘Decameron’ – essay by Robert Barriault