Peacocks of Chen 1971

Curator: Oh, what a strangely beautiful ecosystem. Editor: It's truly captivating. What we're looking at is Leonora Carrington's "Peacocks of Chen," created in 1971. The work blends oil and watercolor on, I believe, board, in her signature surrealist style. Curator: Those figures that populate the frame... the hybrid beings… it feels almost dreamlike, unsettling but inviting at the same time. Like stumbling upon a secret ritual in another dimension. Is that what you'd say it is? A kind of liminal landscape? Editor: Well, beyond the initial impression, I see an intense attention to detail—notice how the rendering of textures, from the feathery plumage to the rough-hewn stone-like structures, suggests she experimented extensively with various watercolor techniques layered with glazing oils to create depth? Curator: The colours are doing a similar job, don't you think? A dance between earthly browns and ethereal blues to achieve a similarly disorienting feeling of simultaneous presence and absence. Editor: Precisely. And knowing Carrington’s background, specifically her fascination with mythology and alchemy, one can also start examining how the alchemical mixing and layering techniques are mirroring her symbolic content as a sort of metaphor... Curator: Definitely. The title implies, doesn’t it, some mythos of origins, a created world even. As if we, the viewer, are only now seeing these ‘Peacocks of Chen’ stepping forward into the annals of whatever cosmic book this is. There’s almost something Gnostic in there! Editor: Interesting. I’m leaning towards focusing on her materials and their implications, but there is certainly space for a myriad of interpretations, including Gnosticism, when considering Carrington's diverse range of literary and artistic influences. But do we know where she found the resources or what community the work was exhibited in, if at all? This informs its contemporary consumption, no? Curator: That's a worthy pursuit, tracing back that materiality. For me, "Peacocks of Chen" resonates because it invites introspection... the symbolism, the technique, the world-building... Editor: Agreed. Its accessibility arises out of these very intersections—the making-of process with her internal cosmologies! Curator: Indeed. I guess we each discovered a peacock feather that unlocked something unique today. Editor: Seems so.