Alice's VIP is a mixed media on canvas measuring 100 × 100 cm by Victoria Horkan. Across a deep green ground brushed in sweeping, grass like strokes, butterflies gather into two main swarms that move on a loose diagonal, one clustered toward the upper left and a larger one rising on the right, with smaller groups and a vivid flash of blue nearer the base. The eye follows their drift through the dark undergrowth, from the dense canopy of wings above down to the stragglers at the bottom edge, so the painting reads as a meadow alive with motion rather than a still arrangement.

The title links the work to Horkan’s Alice in Wonderland collection and tilts the scene toward story. Butterflies already carry metamorphosis in her practice, and here they recall the Caterpillar who becomes a butterfly, so the swarm feels like a Wonderland garden full of change and curiosity. The words Alice and VIP keep the tone playful, as if one guest of honour might be hidden somewhere in the crowd of wings, but which one that is remains an open question for the viewer.

Horkan combines collage and paint on the surface, setting cut photographic butterfly wings from many species among strokes of thick colour so that printed pattern and painted mark sit together and begin to blur. The darker green at the base is worked in shorter, grassy strokes that settle the butterflies into a field, while the wings stand slightly forward from the canvas, caught between the precision of a specimen and the looseness of a gesture.

Alice's VIP is an original oil on canvas measuring 100 × 100 cm by Victoria Horkan. This work has been sold. To enquire about similar available works by Victoria Horkan, contact Eclectic Gallery in Fitzrovia, London.