In 1922 Marjorie Williams wrote a small children's book that became a sensation: The Velveteen Rabbit. The core of this magic tale is about a stuffed toy rabbit becoming real through the pure love of a child. Along with The Rabbit was the oldest, wisest, largest toy in the nursery - "The Skin Horse."  He was called "The Skin Horse," because much of his hair had been rubbed off through the love of generations of children.

One day in the nursery The Rabbit, still a toy, asked, "What is real?" to The Skin Horse.

"Real isn't how you are made," said The Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said The Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said The Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Collins has created something truly real, and truly tangible in this homage - from the wheels of The Skin Horse to a hidden house where, well, you may just find something...

The sixty-five feet of rope is not intended to just pile below the painting, but rather to playfully stretch to other rooms, changing with the mood and the day, to bring real love, true love, not just into one room, but the entire home...

Mixed Media: Oil, Acrylic, Historic Pages, and Found Objects