‘Beyond Your Wildest Dreams’ – a plunge into the life and work of the Anglo Irish Surrealist Artist, Leonora Carrington.

‘Beyond Your Wildest Dreams’ – a plunge into the life and work of the Anglo Irish Surrealist Artist, Leonora Carrington. 

An Illustrated Talk by Author Joanna Foster to mark International Women’s Day 2025. The talk will last approx 45 minutes followed by a Q&A. 

Sat 08 March 2025

Doors: 1.30pm; Starts: 2pm

Tickets: £8

About the Lecture

Joanna will be showing slides of the paintings of Anglo Irish Surrealist Artist Leonora Carrington, whose work is inspired and influenced by Irish myths and Celtic iconography. She will also show photos of her early life in Lancashire and her young adulthood with the Surrealists in Paris and Provence and will talk about what drew her to Leonora’s work and inspired her to write a play about her.

The talk will focus on the fantastic, surreal world of animals and hybrid beings in her paintings, drawn from her Irish roots and in particular the stories that her grandmother Mary Moorhead told her: “My love for the soil, nature, the gods was given to me by my mother’s mother who was Irish from Westmeath, where there is a myth about men who lived underground inside the mountains, called the ‘little people’ who belong to the race of the Sidhe. My grandmother used to tell me we were descendants of that ancient race that magically started to live underground when their land was taken by invaders with different political and religious ideas…. The stories my grandmother told me were fixed in my mind and they gave me mental pictures that I would later sketch on paper.”

It also looks at the dramatic events of Carrington’s life, exploring her rebellion against her upbringing, her relationship with the painter Max Ernst, her flight from the Nazis, her mental breakdown in a Spanish asylum and her recovery and re-invention of herself in Mexico where she settled and continued to paint until the age of 94. Her story is one of survival, resilience and wit and offers hope and courage to all who strive to live their true authentic self.

Leonora is a visionary with important messages for our times. In particular her vision that we are surrounded by consciousness: of animals, nature and the earth as a living being and we ignore this at our peril. Joanna’s play ‘The Inn of the Dawn Horse’ is inspired by Leonora’s life, work and unique and revolutionary voice.

Earlier this year a painting by Leonora Carrington sold in New York for 28 million dollars, the highest ever for a female artist in the UK, on BBC iplayer there was recently a new documentary about her called The Lost Surrealist and today more than a decade after her death in 2011, after years of relative obscurity, it feels as if her time has come.

Joanna’s talk comes to the ICC in advance of the full production of her play ‘The Inn of the Dawn Horse,’ which will be produced at The Arcola Theatre in May 2025.