Darran Anderson reviews the exhibition Leonora Carrington: Celtic Surrealist at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, on view through January 26, 2014.

Anderson writes that the show "demonstrates how Carrington, with reference to her Irish background and Mexican surroundings, embraced the possibilities offered by an art that we are continually reimagining. Nothing is fixed, and there is liberation, mystery and glory in this, as Carrington’s paintings, at their best, brilliantly attest… With their myriad characters, narratives and settings, her paintings suggest not only that art and the imagination can liberate our thinking, but also, by implication, that we make attempts to close down the imagination at every possible opportunity. In one sense, the way she looked at the world existed long before that group of professional lunatics the Surrealists, long before Bosch and Brueghel, long before the first recorded myths even. It was born when we were and will vanish only when we do. And yet, for all her explorations of collective lore, Carrington was, and remains, unique."