The sky above is filled with stories, as is the land below; perhaps this is because human beings share a narrative instinct for talking about their experiences. Or maybe it is why we are inclined to construct the idea of reality, and also, ways of embracing it or losing touch with it.
The painting of Paula Rego invents stories in which time comes to a standstill, retreats, accelerates, and in the blink of an eye a year, ten years, one hundred years can go by; different stories emerge simultaneously in her canvases, which perhaps do not even happen or may only be in the making, something longed for in the gaze of the spectator.
Paula Rego’s first major retrospective in America pays homage to a legend in the history of art, an artist who has the capacity to create a vocabulary that for us reconciles the passions, richness, humility and mystery of the stories that fill the world.
