Foreword

by Jonathan Stedall

Jonathan Stedall, whose film Fools and Angels, made some years ago for the BBC, did much to draw attention to the special qualities of Collins' art, contributes a perceptive foreword.

"For Cecil, the image of the fool,which he often painted, represents that in us which is open and childlike, that which is trusting and innocent and therefore vulnerable. It's the fool in us, he believed, which enables us to connect with the angelic world and with a reality that is invisible but nonetheless substantial. For this reason, angels are less easy to write about than fools, let alone to paint. One definition of an icon, which I have always liked, describes it as a window into heaven. Cecil's paintings of angels are for many people just that, a bridge into another reality"