British painter Vicky Wright (b.1967) is known for her socially engaged works addressing themes of control, subjugation and fantasy. Her densely layered compositions combine figurative elements with abstract passages of loose, gestural brushstrokes. Informed by her childhood in a coal mining town in the north east of England, her cryptic imagery often refers to the underground experience of miners, with fragmented and distorted faces emerging from the darkness of the wooden panels on which she paints. Similar to the Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593), whose portrait heads are made up entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables and flowers, Wright’s painting Celestine constructs a whimsical visage from birds, flowers, insects and abstract marks. Evocative of spring and regeneration, this strange, phantasmagoric image suggests a figure reborn from the recesses of a subterranean world and reflects the artist’s interest in the close bond between the human body and nature.