Gilvan-Cartwright's work is dictated by a fascination for fantasy and “dreamworlds” as much as for the act of painting itself; to engage in “the imagination and the dynamic properties of a painted reality”.Appropriating images from high and low art sources, he builds his paintings with layers of thin washes,glazes and passages of painterly excess. Reminiscent of Fragonard, the German Romantics and Victorian fairy paintings, his work is both rigorous and playful. They have an extraordinary light revealing half remembered dreams and desire for utopia.