Tate: How to Draw Like Paula Rego
PRESENTING FOR TATE, May 2020
How to Draw Like Paula Rego: Follow Tate’s step-by-step guide to pastel drawing with artist Katy Papineau.
Paula Rego has probably had the biggest influence on me of any artist, so I was really grateful (and nervous!) to be a part of this video for Tate. A few years ago I came across Rego’s illustrated version of Jane Eyre when browsing in the Enitharmon Editions bookshop. The introduction by Marina Warner put into words the things I was interested in about making work out of literature and stories. It really stayed with me, and ever since then I’ve gone back to Rego’s work and Warner’s writing whenever I feel stuck.
“Such an emphasis on the fire in the mind and the dark outside might perhaps reveal, without saying much more, how Paula Rego of all artists would respond to Jane Eyre. Paula Rego has been making images out of stories since she was a child, and if anything can be said to offer a consistent thread through her fertile and multi-faceted production it is this: she has been a narrative artist all along, and one whose stories are not reproduced from life as observed or remembered, but from goings-on in the camera lucida of the mind’s eye. Rego hasn’t lost in adulthood the energy of the child’s make-believe world: ‘It all comes out of my head,’ she says. ‘All little girls improvise, and it’s not just illustration: I make it my own.”
Read the full essay: Marina Warner, An artist’s dream world
A selection of Rego’s lithographs in response to Jane Eyre
I’ve always thought mainly about Rego’s storytelling, so it was fascinating to research how she uses her materials for Tate. She layers up hard and soft pastels (Conte a Paris and Unison respectively) on primed paper, and spraying fixative (Lascaux) between each layer - and no smudging!
I would really recommend the documentary Secrets and Stories made by Nick Willing, it’s brilliant.
This interview with Rego from 2011 is interesting too.
And Marina Warner’s latest book Forms of Enchantment has a chapter on Rego. If you’re interested in storytelling and the evolution of our most archetypal stories, I’d also recommend reading her book From the Beast to the Blonde - about the history of fairy tales, how they evolved and spread.