I’m as mysterious to myself as I am mysterious to others. –Leonora Carrington
On April 6, 1917, an imaginative Leonora Carrington was born in
Lancashire, England. The daughter of a wealthy textile manufacturer,
Carrington grew up on a large estate full of wild flora and fauna, under
the care of an Irish nanny named Mary Kavanaugh. It was in this setting
that Leonora came to truly love nature and Irish folklore, both of
which influenced her work later on. Under the auspices of her Catholic
parents, Carrington was sent to one convent school after another in an
attempt to instill in her a sense of religious discipline. However, she
was routinely expelled from each school due to her “eccentricity,
usually a combination of antisocial tendencies and certain supernatural
proclivities.” She took no interest in religious studies and therefore
refused to let her rebellious spirit be tamed by these rigid
environments. After numerous attempts to convince her parents to send
her to art school, Leonora finally succeeded.
