A Painter of Stories; Paula Rego's works are packed with layers of meaning.

Byline: Tara Pepper

When artist Paula Rego was growing up in Lisbon in the 1940s, her grandparents and great-aunt would spin vivid stories rooted in Portugal's folklore tradition, thrilling and terrifying her with their embellished tales. Perhaps it is no accident, then, that storytelling is the key to her dark, captivating art, displayed in a powerful new exhibit, "Paula Rego" at London's Tate Britain (through Jan. 2). Inspired by works as diverse as Disney films, the 19th-century stories of Comtesse de Segur and Irish author Martin McDonagh's menacing play "The Pillowman," Rego allows her tales to evolve out of the process of creating a painting; each work depicts not a static state but a layered and shifting narrative. Like a novelist, she draws you into her characters.

Among the Saatchi Gallery's permanent collection of mutilated mannequins and dead-fly sculptures, Rego's acrylic canvases appear strangely traditional. The Tate show reveals them to be richer and more deeply disturbing than anything recent Brit Art has produced. Christina Bagatavicius, assistant curator at the Tate, says Rego's paintings haven't been well understood: "People are just starting to realize the depth in her work." She has long been regarded as a masterly painter of women's experience. Germaine Greer wrote in 1988: "It is not often given to women to recognize themselves in painting, still less to see their private world, their dreams, the insides of their heads, projected on such a scale." Now Rego's art is accepted as much more than an exploration of femininity. Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, argues that Rego has "taken her own childhood experiences, memories, fantasies and fears, and given them universal significance."

But Rego, who grew up under Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar's repressive regime, is not concerned only with inner worlds. Politics have been a running theme since her early collages, which are infused with malevolence and brutality. She sliced apart her paintings then rearranged them into rebellious, fractured works like "The Dogs of Barcelona" (1965), inspired by a report in the London Times ...