Welcome to the inside of my brain,” says artist Issy Wood, gesturing to her sprawling east London studio. All around, mad, beautiful things litter the space: a small forest’s worth of house plants, an electronic keyboard, a towering assortment of porcelain toby jugs, miniature nuns and anthropomorphic vegetables. Hundreds of her paintings are strewn across the floor, each more dazzling than the last: lush car interiors to creepy dolls, seductive cigarette packets to stainless-steel food processors.

The 33-year-old has just come back from a work trip to Qatar (“Mayfair in the desert”) and she takes out her phone to show me pictures of tiny camel-riding robot jockeys – an ethical if unsettling replacement for children trafficked from Bangladesh for the purposes of camel racing.

The art world, with its nefarious intermingling of money and power, has brought her to some strange places, from which her studio feels like a peaceful, self-contained haven. Since graduating from Goldsmiths, followed by the Royal Academy in 2018, Wood’s witty, sensual figurative paintings – alongside her equally distinctive music and blog-writing – have gained her a faithful following and the attention of some high-profile mentor figures.