She went to a series of boarding schools and convents, but her strangeness eclipsed her chances of staying at any of them for long (she once described herself as having an “allergy” to education). Tales of enchantment and the divine entered into Carrington’s life at a young age: her Irish mother and grandmother would captivate the young Leonora with Celtic myths and told her that she was directly descended from a race of Irish fairy people called the Sidhe. Her parents were nouveau riche, and she and her three brothers were raised in a looming gothic mansion called Crookhey Hall, located not far from where the Pendle witch trials took place. Leonora Carrington was born in 1917 in Lancashire, England to a strict Catholic family. She had all the makings of an icon, and yet she did not find acclaim or notoriety until after her death in 2011. She was a surrealist painter, a magic practitioner, a runaway, and a debutante. Her wild life was marked by adventure, rebellion, and an irrepressible desire to create. Long before Sephora started selling “ Starter Witch Kits” and books with titles like Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive became mainstream, the Mexican-British surrealist painter, Leonora Carrington, was conjuring her own magical realms with the help of paint and the written word.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |