Green Tea
Leonora Carrington
LEONORA CARRINGTON, 1942. OIL ON CANVAS.
In the verdant landscapes of Leonora Carrington’s mind, nothing is hidden for long. Nighttime and strangeness lurk under the surface, and the veneers of domesticity cannot contain them. Carrington was born into the British upper class, raised in a Gothic mansion that provoked imagination at every turn. She ran away as a teenager, escaping an ordered and predictable life to travel across Europe, America, and South America. In each city, she found herself at the centre of the avant-garde and became one of the most significant figures in 20th century art, defining the late surrealist movement across the globe. Carrington’s pristine, suffocating childhood remained with her, and here we see it in the labyrinthine garden that extends behind her. She is wrapped in a cow-skin straitjacket and magical beasts are chained to gentle, English trees. The underworld is visible below the grass, bats, cadavers, and strange birds that protect new life. As above so below, there is darkness in the light and light in darkness, and Carrington embraces it all.