The thesis contains a discussion of surrealism and the work of Meret Oppenheim and Leonora Carrington. In the thesis I also distinguish three groups of paintings in essays and describe my work and the way in which theory and practice have recommended one another. 'Salience and Surrealism' discusses how the features of collaboration, play and partnership involve women artists within the surrealist movement, and how their ideas of the feminine principle evolve and change. I also discuss the changing attitudes to imagination, creative inspiration and activity, and the understanding brought about by the meeting between surrealism and psychology. The salience of surrealism as an introverted urge and instinct toward individuation, is suggested by Kenneth Wack 'as the source of surrealism's most abiding success.' The contemporary use of salience applies to features, characteristics, and from architecture as protrusions or fortifications. The dictionary definition begins with extroverted examples like dancig, leaping about and jetting forth. The archaic meaning is origin or first beginning, hence in old medicine salience applies to the heart when it first shows in the embryo. In salience the anagram of, a silence, gave heed to the atmosphere of silence from creativity and in paintings. A silence, also corresponds with the middle part of Meret Oppenheim's life when she experienced an artisitc crisis and depression. This essay looks back fifty years of self-expression from this artist and finds prominent features to suggest the essential dichotomies which mark the artwork. Meret Oppenheim's ouevre includes painting, sculpture, poetry, books, and theatre costume and apparal. Her multiple talents in the arts and literature are like those of Leonora Carrington who has published several books and plays, in the visual arts she sculpted and painted. The salience of their creative and intellectual endeavours found realisation in the wisdom of the feminine, of animal spirits and of natural worlds. The principles of alchemy also inspired and informed their attitudes to creativity which emerges from the unification of opposites. Both artists called for a new alliance between male and female principles, and evolve concepts of androgyny, which for them lift creation to higher levels. These women as artists found a field of the arts that furnished them with both physical life and spiritual life / Master of Arts (Hons)