Paula Rego

Paula Rego is a Portuguese visual artist who is well known for her paintings and prints based on storybooks. Rego's style has evolved from abstract to representational, she is often painting work that reflects feminism. In my own opinion I think that Rego's artwork is very interesting as she paints very peculiar things like, rabbit heads on human bodies in her piece about war. One of my favourite pieces by Rego is "Dancing Ostriches" because I like the way she has used oil pastels to create the skin tones of the ballerinas in the image. I also like how she has given them quite manly bodies, which is the complete opposite of what the stereotypical dancer should look like. The "Dancing Ostriches" series was inspired by Walt Disney's Fantasia.

In my own opinion I think that Paula Rego’s artwork is extremely weird, but I am intrigued by it as she uses a lot of textures throughout her work and I also like how she uses quite dull colours to make the image stand out a bit more. The dancers also have very scary expressions on their faces which makes the painting very eerie as you don’t really know what they are doing or thinking. Rego’s painting has quite a sinister twist compared to the “innocent” children’s movie, I think this because in the film Fantasia the birds are just dancing and look very elegant, however in Rego’s painting there is nothing elegant about it as the women are quite scary looking and have fairly manly bodies.