After years of being turned down by gallery after gallery, being told that anything with figurative horse imagery could not be contemporary art, and further being rejected because she was female, (the art world at the time, was very much a boys club, with every gallery owner chasing the next Ed Rusha, Warhol, Lichtenstien, Basquiat etc..) Collins took an unprecedented move. In 1992, Collins scraped together every dime she could and opened a small gallery converted from a garage on Abbott Kinney in Venice, California. She showed other artist work as well as her own, often telling buyers that “Ashley Collins” was a male painter who was a recluse from England. She would move all the inventory at closing, then spend all night painting her own work, starting again the next day. The pose as a male artist worked, and suddenly, Collins work began to sell and her art bean to find recognition. One of her early believers was long term nationally known gallerist Arlene LewAllen, who designated Collins as one of her sure picks for stardom: “to my eyes she will be successful, art is her life, her work is mature, sophisticated and confident – so much so that it is contagious” Her work found its way into shows at the Laguna Art Museum, Singapore Art Museum, the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Cultural Palace, Beijing, China, Museum of Fine Arts, Hanoi Vietnam. Eiteljorg Museum Biennial Exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Manilla, Philippines winning major juried competitions and honors and major gallery exhibitions over the coming years (such as the notable 200-year-old London gallery Frost & Reed). Over the next six year period, her work became steadily more and more visible in the art markets, showing with John Baldessari, Joe Ando, Johnathan Borofsky, with Mark di Suvero, with Edward Ruscha, Lita Alberquerque, Chuck Arnoldi, Laddie John Dill, Eric Orr, Peter Alexander, with Deborah Butterfield and Susan Rothenburg, with Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Susan Rothenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Sol LeWitt,. Often reviews compared her work with Susan Rothenburg and Deborah Butterfield, but Collins work was wholly her own and incapable of easy classification. Critics were often unprepared for how any work involving portions of the physical horse could create such forceful contemporary work. For Collins, having her work elevated to exhibition with the star filled elite of contemporary art was a breakthrough moment, having gone from homelessness to showing with what are considered by many to be some of the greatest contemporary artist of all time. However, Collins still continued to meet resistance -hearing repeatedly that any work involving the figurative aspect of a horse could not be true contemporary art (a battle also still fought by Deborah Butterfield). Collins forged ahead and continued to break price points and barrier after barrier, in a slow gradual process, avoiding the shooting star syndrome that left many of her contemporary counterparts by the wayside.
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