A writer, printmaker, collage artist and illustrator, Portuguese-born Paula Rego, working in England, creates children's stories that are "thin guises for pshycho-sexual intrigue and taboo, where magical realism rules, where nothing is certain except the witchy powers of feminism, and the underlying notion that nothing is as it seems." (Saatchi)

She says that many of these 'dark' tales spring from the subconscious part of her brain and not from reality in her life. Some of her works, based on reactions against Portuguese politics when António Salazar was dictator from, 1932 to 1968 have political implications. They express her ongoing need to challenge the status quo, such as in 2000, when she did a ser...