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Priscilla Day

British Artist Priscilla Day paints on found objects, imparting new life to cast-off material. By turns whimsical, poetic, and savvy, and wholly captivating and original.

Day is a true original. Yet her work is anything but "naïve." Beautifully executed, usually in exquisitely modulated glazes of oil paint, and sealed with yacht varnish, Day's painted objects are often rich in sophisticated literary allusions, some of them quite mysterious:

"Being dyslexic, I think in pictures rather than in words, and I can always 'see' instantly what I want to draw before I draw it. But, ironically, I can really only draw with words to guide me. I first decided I wanted to be a book illustrator at the age of nine, while I had measles, but was discouraged because it 'wasn't a proper job.' Yet every piece I do, especially the 'Junk' is an illustration to a story, even if it's only a sentence that I've made up and never tell to anyone else."

Sometimes it's up to the viewer to supply a story--old frying pan holds a sleepy cat, peaking at us through one open eye. Often the extravagant titles tell the whole story, as in "Luciane--Dreaming of a Red Ribbon and Spectacular Wins at Nap, in the Demi-Monde, in Paris," the artist's homage to Toulouse-Lautrec, painted on the lyre back of a discarded antique mahogany straight chair. "My Father's Baby Bath" is the enameled basin in which her father, according to family history, was bathed as an infant. Now transformed, a self-absorbed mermaid floats inside, gazing into her looking glass, accompanied by several admiring carp.