Paula Rego – my life in six paintings

One of modern art’s most distinctive talents picks the pictures that took her from Portugal to the Tate

Born in Portugal in 1935, Paula Rego is one of art’s great storytellers. She studied at the Slade, where her contemporaries included the British painter Victor Willing, whom she married in 1959. After his death from multiple sclerosis in 1988, her own reputation grew, fuelled by her unsettling pictures often inspired by childhood memories of Estoril (where her father owned an electrical goods factory) and the nearby coastal village of Ericeira. Here, as Tate Britain hosts a landmark retrospective, Rego tells the stories behind six pictures that sum up her remarkable career.

Paula Rego is at Tate Britain, London SW1 (tate.org.uk) until Oct 24

dress. Out of his head emerge his memories of old Portuguese folk tales, like the one with the witch frying the pancakes, and every time a naughty boy steals one the cat gets a slap.

Vic got out of bed and back to normal life before he was supposed to. He was not obedient. Later the English doctors said he’d done the right thing but we were all horribly worried.”

THE THREE GOLDEN HEADS (1975) h

“We were broke. The revolution had happened in Portugal and the family factory was going bust. The banks wouldn’t extend any loans no matter what I wore or how many suppers we made for business people. So I wrote to the Gulbenkian [Foundation in Lisbon] and asked if they’d give me a grant to look at and research original folk tales... and they did.

I spent six months in the British Library, reading stories from many different countries – I wanted to see if they were more cruel in their original form – and then I made illustrations from them to present to the Gulbenkian. This is one of them. It was a relief to have a story given to me after many years feeling stuck and producing paintings that had felt flat and dead since Pop Art came in. The 1970s were a difficult time.”

GIRL LIFTING HER SKIRT TO A DOG (1986) h

“My friend Colette suggested I do something about my life with Vic. With the Girl and Dog pictures, the shadows crept in – and shadows ground everything. Here, the girl is lifting up her skirt and the dog doesn’t know where to look, poor thing! In others from the series, girls are forcing open the dogs’ mouths to give them medicine. There is tenderness but also aggression. You have to be forceful to do good.”

CAPTAIN HOOK AND THE LOST BOY (1992) i

“My friend Peter Hancock sat as Captain Hook. Maybe Hook is a man who likes children, not in a good way. Maybe.”

TIME – PAST AND PRESENT (1990) g

“I painted this at the National Gallery when I was an associate artist there. This is a story of an old sailor thinking about his life. He is surrounded by his memories but of course it is full of things from my own life. The baby is my granddaughter, Lola, with her goggly eyes. And there’s a picture of Vic as a child in his sailor suit hanging on the wall. For the other paintings on the wall, I used pictures from the National Gallery collection; Zubarán, I think.

The picture wasn’t working till a friend suggested I paint out the street scene in the doorway. So I made it much simpler, letting in all that beautiful Ericeira light, which I love. That fixed it.”