Marrying the sinister and the innocent, Wilson’s paintings of children address the “cute” (read “unsettling”) aesthetics of youth. As Peter Benson Miller writes, “… Wilson’s children are expressionless ciphers, wide-eyed wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Using visual cues from cartoons and toys, Wilson imbues doll-like imagery with pathos typical of renaissance painting, creating scenes that blend and upend expectations of historical painting.
In addition to elaborating Wilson’s ongoing exploration of child iconography, Scouts introduces a new trajectory in the form of larger than life images of bath toys. By focusing her lens on the objects of children, Wilson reminds the audience of the carnal underpinnings of ostensibly pure objects. As Rob Goyanes describes, “Wilson’s paintings retain an un-ironic cheer, a cartoon like-state somewhere between realism and fantasy, that uncanny zone that colors the majority of life.”
