Cowgirls and UFOs populate the paintings of Texas-raised artist Esther Pearl Watson, whose nomadic childhood continues to inspire her work. She terms these “memory paintings”, creating pictures on board and paper depicting farmland, highways, oil rigs, payday loan storefronts, playgrounds and parking lots. Diary entries feature on these works, in naive text painted directly onto the scenes—as well as more than a few flying saucers. A new exhibition of her work has just opened at Maureen Paley in London.
