Nerissa Layton’s favourite quote comes from Banksy. “Art should comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable”. As one who has lived through the extremes of both disturbance and comfort, she is in a unique position to deliver on that promise with her art. Often living in a paracosmic world of her own imagining, her pictures are more like windows into fevered dreams, and cherished reveries. In them, you’ll bear witness to a remarkable soul who sees life both through an innocent, playful child’s eyes, and through the ancient, tortured eyes of one who has, perhaps, experienced too much. Nerissa’s work invariably elicits an immediate, visceral reaction—even a double take… but, as Nerissa is so fond of saying, “anything less is wallpaper”.