The dark art of Paula Rego is powerfully exhibited in her ‘Nursery Rhyme’ series. Small ink engravings of such intensity, they can only be seen as a form of black magic!
Although Portuguese by birth, her artistic formation was English having graduated from London’s Slade School of Fine Art garlanded with honours. Her considerable imagination is also populated with English themes and characters, as here, where she takes English nursery rhymes (ostensively for children) and turns such ‘innocence’ on its head, exposing their dark undercurrents with her trademark force.
It’s a kind of alchemy!
