Museum Moment : The Royal Academy

Spot a red elephant running rampage along the gallery walls, paint splattering from every direction across the canvas in their wake. Wink at the paper cut-out girls in red satin, cheekily posing between trees as footballers enjoy a kickabout in the corner of the gallery space, their hairy legs on full show for all to see.

Rose Wylie’s solo exhibition ‘The Picture Comes First’ is a playful, cheerful and somewhat tongue-in-cheek presentation of this 92 year old’s imaginative practice.

Many pieces in this exhibition have been crafted using collage techniques and thick oil impasto. Text in childlike scrawl offers observations, descriptions, instructions and thoughts, wrapping across the canvases like TV subtitles – a narrator to these compositions of joyful mash-ups. It’s a riotous festival of colour, humour and feeling.

Drawing inspiration from her experiences of growing up in London during the Blitz, of popular culture and fairytales along with newspaper stories, biblical references and more, we enter a world pulsating with the mischievous energy of a true artist rebel. It’s fascinating to think what Joshua Reynolds would have thought of Wylie’s unanatomical creatures and insects as big as houses!