By Artist Alison Pilkington
Oil on board
24 x 18 cm
2020
Carnival Creatures
(°1967, Sligio, Ireland) invites the viewer into her inner world of personal experiences and memories. The canvases often feel alienating and restless. Yet humor and absurdity are essential. Bizarre, surrealistic figures, reminiscent of the strange creatures of Jeroen Bosch, live in a wasteland of lakes, seashores and distant mountain ranges. Pilkington’s work often draws on a variety of eclectic influences from ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture - from the classical painting of the 17th-century Western traditions to the writing of Stephen King, the humorist Ivor Cutler and the stories of James Joyce. This artist likes to fuse and collide sources of inspiration. From the poetry of WB Yeats and the paintings of El Greco to the cinematic images of Ridley Scott and Ivan Tarkovsy; she mouds them in an allegorical body of work that aims to embody her own memory.
