Paula Rego
Scarecrow and the Pig, 2005
Pastel on board
180 x 120 cm
Paula Rego is best known for her paintings in pastel that have a strong storytelling element and explore human relationships, often through animal characters. Her figures are realistically depicted, yet they are mostly imaginary or inspired by literature and art history. References range from Old Masters and Surrealists to Peter Pan, Aesop’s fables, Portuguese folklore and feminist texts, such as Simone de Beauviour’s seminal book The Second Sex, which looks at the treatment of women throughout history.
Scarecrow and The Pig is based on a tale of a pig that rescues a scarecrow from a fire. When the farmer wants to slaughter the pig, the scarecrow does nothing to help rescue the pig. Rego’s scarecrow is the character in the green dress on a cross. The moral of the story is retold by a ladybird, looking like a grim reaper in the foreground inspecting the pig’s head. This character explains the need to forgive the scarecrow due to it being inanimate, a point perhaps underlined by her use of an animal skull as the scarecrow’s head.
Violent yet whimsical, Scarecrow and The Pig is an example of Rego’s preferred themes of power games and hierarchies in the stories she represents. Her own story within this is important too. She says her work is 'personal, but not completely personal. It’s political, too, and funny — taking the piss.'1 Whilst there are autobiographical elements in many of her works, she views these readings as too often bestowed on female artists over their male counterparts, instead viewing her practice as a means to transmit a feminine experience via a historically masculine medium.
1 From MAP Magazine, 2005, www.mapmagazine.co.uk/studio-paula-rego, last accessed 26 April 2021