Click images to enlarge

Review by Clare Henry 2007

Polly Hope's passion is plurality in art. Today it's unpopular to be a polymath, but "I can't see the edges," she explains. "I love variety: of medium, subject, style. I want to do it all." And so she does. Painting, digital photo-based work, (she calls them "heat prints"), sculpture, tapestries, murals, portraits, church vestments, robes for the Queen of Holland, book illustrations, stained glass windows, a clock for Rotterdam, a fountain in Switzerland, record sleeves, terracotta panels, animated film, costumes and sets for opera and theatre in Düsseldorf, Zurich, - and London where she also provided the libretto.

Specially created for exhibition in London 2007, Hope's most recent large work features a wonder world of imaginative Indian animals and birds - "wild and domesticated, huge or microscopic, colourful or camouflaged, squawking and silent," allowing her to indulge in multitudinous and fabulous facets of fantasy. And what an encyclopaedic animal pageant Hope has painted for us.

Daredevil donkeys with rosy-blush rouged cheeks career across pink sand. Tiny turbaned Indians struggle with red ribbon leashes of - happily - mild looking but giant-size dogs big enough to converse with a Trojan Horse. Antelopes leap over scurrying umbrella-toting servants fleeing a rainstorm. Five tigers creature could well be a fluffy toy if he were not man-eating a western business gent in suit and tie! His impressive tiger brothers are alternately stylised into orange and black zigzags or painted in superb photo-realist lifelike fashion.

Elephants are always important in India. Here Hope gives us assorted versions. A diptych highlights a manmade processional bamboo monster exploding with fireworks while the rest of the grey herd stampede past. My favourite, a dozen Heinz Varieties in blue, grey, orange, green and of course pink, some wildly trumpeting, others coyly decorative, are all held together with red wool stitches. Each scene also contains small, distant traditional buildings, their fretwork, spires, domes, archways and cupolas evoking an always exotic India.

Hope's decision to pump up the scale factor and feature imposing giant size animals in tiny toy town settings ministered to by Lilliputian figures is driven by moral conviction. "Animals are noble creatures, independent, and very individual. In many parts of the world they are an important part of the workforce. But they can also be subservient, even enslaved. I want to wave animal beauty from the rooftops, brandish it far and wide, so here I've made the painted animals huge in comparison to their surroundings so you have to notice them."

Appropriately the works are all painted on unframed Indian Khadi paper - thick, heavy, strong, textured, handmade of "rags from worn-out pyjamas and saris chopped and soaked, pushed and rolled," and with a distinctive, uneven wavy edge caused by drying on racks out in the hot Indian sun. "It's beautiful stuff" she says, "and expensive too, often costing more than canvas."

Global travels - Hope has spent long periods living in Greece and Spain and cfxg has journeyed extensively in India, Mexico, Australia, Japan, Ecuador and most recently the Sahara, where she relished wonderful 12,000 year old rock paintings of animals - have merely encouraged her animal passion. Now these new Indian pictures provide a welcome excuse to peruse and elaborate a favourite subject.

Hope loves to tell a story and these new works are no exception. Here intriguing small, lively Indian figures - riding, driving, working, resting, running, fearful, exuberant - animate the pictures. Distant mountains, rivers, lakes, storms, sunsets, swamps, Mughal palaces, pagoda and oriental buildings, "pretty much made up, bits from here and bits from there," add colour and context. "I like my pictures to have content. As a child we had an extraordinary book of 19th century Royal Academy paintings full of romantic love scenes, shiny horses and shipwrecks. I still love the forbidden profusion of Victorian art. I like the power of the drawing as well as the richness of colour."

Above all Hope's work has humour and irreverence. Her regal falcon all blue and gold, sits stately on his orb while Lilliput men from Guilliver's Travels rush to bring him his bejewelled, plumed hood. Quite how they will place it and secure it without the help of a crane or helicopter remains part of the mystery. Meanwhile kites fly in celebration overhead.

Her creatures are never cute, never sentimental, often fierce - her monkeys have a devilish air; her cheetah is red or claw and eye. But they are always engaging, sometimes almost human. Her own beloved animals are easy subjects, being ready and convenient models. Wild creatures are more difficult. She rarely draws them from life as she's allergic to zoos. However she does use photographs. "I long ago learnt that a camera can be as alive as a paint brush. But I also buy toys when I travel and these work their way into the pictures. Yesterday I bought a spotted camel in Ikea and it will certainly get added to the camel picture! The drawings are less portraits than composite visions."

So how does she work? "I like doing big drawings. The materials are watercolour, graphite, crayons and a bit of ink. Some, like the twilight goat scene and my Snow Leopard' have 3D additions of handmade Indian tissue paper. The technique is old fashioned drawing, beginning with a very light pencil outline of the animal - then I add its friends. Images take on their own life, take over the work and I have to run with them."

Living in foreign places with powerful sunlight, deep shadows, rich textiles and exotic vegetation has fuelled her addiction to strong colour, wondrous pattern and complex embellished surfaces. No minimalism here. Her imposing king Rooster picture perfectly exemplifies her familiar, characteristic jewel-like use of colour: cloissone-style azure blue, purple, orange, crimson and gold feathers and crown are juxtaposed with white marble minarets and a parade of smaller green parrots, cockatoos and a vermillion and black gobble gobble turkey. All these creatures far outweigh, outshine and out manoeuvre their diminutive owners.

This sureness is coupled with a keen eye and confident hand to create her signature incisive line. Polly Hope's other great strength is her romantic gusto, a flair for ebullient detail and wit, and her ability to make a direct and dashing statement, be it about mischievous monkeys, lovable leopards, timorous tigers, jaded guars, or recalcitrant camels and their keepers. Hope delights in her fairytale fable animal world. And, via these remarkable pictures, so can us.

Clare Henry is art critic at the New York Financial Times

Additional images can be viewed at www.pollyhope.com