Chosen Author

Leonora Carrington

Born April 6 1917, and died May 25, 2011 making her one of the last surviving participants of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. A woman of many talents, Carrington didn't only write but she was also a surrealist painter and an English-born Mexican artist.

I read the hearing trumpet before I read up about Leonora Carrington, just because I had a week away and had some free time. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it had me laughing out loud every several pages, and I felt inspired to draw while I read.
The Hearing Trumpet is a story about an old woman (92 years old) and all the things she gets up to. She is given the hearing trumpet by her best friend Carmella, which enables her to over hear her family plotting to send her to an institution. She finds herself trapped in sinister retirement home, where the elderly must inhabit building shaped like igloos and circus tents, endure twisted religious preaching and eat in a canteen overlooked by the mysterious portrait of the leering Abbess.
The book progressively gets more and more bizarre, to the point where you have to double read to make sure you can still read. Its a lovely mix between realistic and complete fantasy.

Reasons I chose to study this book and author:

I find it hard to read a book, I often get distracted, however this book I found hard to put down.
Carringtons life is also very interesting, and she was crazy in her own way. Being part of the surrealist movement, she travelled and did some out of the ordinary things, like turning up to a party wearing only a sheet and nothing else, and then when she had everyones attention, she dropped the sheet. Completely naked standing in a party. She did as she pleased.
Her stories often include hybrid animals, which I'm interested in seeing how I would draw these. A lot of the book itself is surreal, so I've looked at lots of surrealist art. It all (to me) looks pretty old and mystical, and id like to see what I can do with this in a modern, illustrative form.



5 motifs

Hybrids
The Hearing Trumpet
Religion
The portrait of the leering Abbess
Surrealism


5 quotes

1. "In case they lock you up in a tenth storey room" said Carmella lighting a cigar, "you could take a lot of those ropes you weave, and escape. I could be waiting down below with a machine gun and an automobile, a hired automobile you know, I don't suppose it would be too expensive for an hour or two."

2. "This was no dog, but a huge grey timber wolf."

3. "Georgina Sykes occupied a circus tent, or rather a cement representation of a tent with red and white stripes."

4. "Probably painted in the late eighteenth century. Spanish of course, an Italian could never have done anything so enchantingly sinister. A nun with a leer. Unknown master."

5. "If the old woman can't go to Lapland, then Lapland must come to the old woman."

5 locations

The bee pond
The cavern
The mysterious tower
Galahad's-her small room and back yard
The strange fairytale like cottages where they live in the home



5 characters

Marian Leatherby
Carmella
Dr.Gambit
Anubeth and Pontefact
Malborough


5 pieces of information about the author

Quotes about her...

1."People who write about Leonora Carrington tend to dwell on the life. They revel in her sheer unexpectedness."

2. "Animals, the wild and a mix of real and imaginary creatures saturate her writing and her art."

3. "her unsettling ability not just to write with both hands but worse, to mirror-write- to write backwards as well as forwards."

4. "She was, in effect, a kind of embodiment of all that the movement held dear in its women: young, beautiful, vivacious, uninhabited, and in possession of an imagination that knew no limits."

5. "like fairy-stories invaded by a box of walking fireworks"

This is her.

These are some of her paintings.