Why do we find the doll-like effigies in Nagado’s paintings so affecting? Is it that they signify a permanent state of childhood whose innocence, for a whole tranche of reasons, cannot be defiled? Is it the feeling of regret that we have lost, irrevocably, that halcyon state of innocence in which we ourselves were once immersed? Is it that they represent the supernatural, advocates of a sacred, spiritual or magical world whose influences in our technocratic society become increasingly vestigial, much to our peril? Is it that their intrinsic beauty reminds of something that is now lost in our culture’s shunning of beauty as an ideal?

 Lya Nagado: Questioning Mortality by Roy Exley