Edith Rimmington

There is only one oil painting by Edith Rimmington in the public domain, The Decoy which is on display in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. The remainder of her works are in private collections but appear from time to time in exhibitions across the globe. Her work entitled The Oneiroscopist (the interpreter of dreams) was exhibited in 2011 at the Vancouver Art Gallery as part of a major exhibition of surrealist art. The title of the artwork actually means “the specialist in looking through dreams” and is a nod to the Surrealism movement. The diving gear next to the human-like bird represents the motive of diving deep into herself to the point of subconsciousness.

As well producing works of art, and later photography, Edith also wrote poems and poetic prose often created through the medium of automatic text. There is no single volume of her collected work and much is now hidden away in dusty copies of short-run publications. Two such pieces were written for Free Unions, published in 1946 by the London group and edited by Simon Watson Taylor.

Eight Interpreters of the Dream, Oil on canvas, 1940 [1]

She was born in Leicester and studied at the Brighton School of Art. Whilst in Sussex she met the artist Leslie Robert Baxter. They married in 1926 before moving to Manchester. She returned south, to London, in 1937 and was then introduced to the British Surrealist Group before the end of the decade by Gordon Onslow Ford. Edith was one of the few female members, along with Eileen Agar and her close friend Emmy Bridgwater. Bridgwater and Rimmington had been inspired by the International Surrealist Exhibition which first introduced surrealism into England in 1936. Having joined the London group she was encouraged in her painting, and indeed admired, by the artists Edward Burra and John Banting who became a good friend. Much of her early work, both art and poetry, was reproduced in pamphlets and other short publications by surrealist groups both in England and abroad. She continued working as part of the London surrealist movement well beyond the formal disbandment of the Group in 1947. Rimmington was also recognized in the art manifesto Arson where some of her drawing and collages were reproduced in 1942. This manifesto was an attempt to bring a new light to Surrealism and to focus directly on that movement. In 1950, Rimmington moved from London to live in Bexhill of Sussex. Sussex became an escape for artists and poets traveling away from war torn countries. In her later years of visual art, Rimmington worked with color photography of coastal scenery including Sussex Coast, taken in 1960. She died in 1986 in Bexhill-on-Sea.

Edith Rimmington (1902 – 1986), was an English artist, poet and photographer associated with the Surrealist movement.