That Rose Wylie is an extremely productive artist becomes immediately apparent at the huge retrospective which has opened at the Royal Academy of Art. Now in her nineties, she shows no sign of slowing down and regularly creates huge canvases with bold, freely painted images of things, places, ideas and references which reflect her life.

Very exhilarating to see this huge exhibition of work by Rose Wylie. She’s 91 and still busy working, having started making art in earnest in her seventies. And what a body of work she has created – it fills all the galleries of the Royal Academy. And, amazingly, she’s the first female artist to have been given a retrospective at this august gallery.

I was impressed to see that she uses paper collage to create her initial designs before scaling them up for the huge, baggy canvases that fill the walls. At first you might think that the work has a child-like quality but they are more structured than the careless daubings of a child. She is inspired by stuff – images on the telly, film, in magazines, memory.

There’s also terrific humour to her work. I did like the daft painting of the horse with an attempt to depict the anatomy of the beast. Her faces, whether human or animal have a charming innocence to them and a lot of eyelashes!

You can see that when she has hit upon an idea she really develops it in a witty, very playful way and, just to avoid any doubt as to her intension, there is text to tease and beguile the viewer.