Eileen Agar, R.A. (1899-1991)

Agar was excited by the Surrealists' desire to paint 'what goes on inside our heads as opposed to imitating the outside world'. She said 'I am suspicious of the whole idea of working from dreams' and she was also uneasy with an excitement about automatism as something 'which was supposed to bypass conscious control to draw directly on the deep springs of unconscious'. She liked to see Surrealism as 'the interpenetrating of reason and unreason', and valued for its wit, irreverence and joke making. She would go so far as daydreaming, but she kept control of her images.

(Exhibition catalogue, The Redfern Gallery, Eileen Agar: An imaginative playfulness, London, 2004, p.3)