Birdman

In 1947 Collins published The Vision of the Fool, in which he featured a group of thirty one paintings and drawings together with a preface setting out the aims of his art: the quest for Great Happiness. In his Notes by the Artist which were written for his retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, November-December 1959, he stated: 'I am not very interested in what is called 'pure painting' or objets d'art. I am concerned with art as poetic consciousness, or as metaphysical experience ... All my pictures are based on a theme, and the theme is the cause of all the form and colour harmonies and no colour or line exists for its own sake. The subject is the context of forms and colours'.