In her earliest works, such as "Always at Your Excellency's Service", painted in 1961, Rego was strongly influenced by Surrealism, and particularly the work of Joan Miró. This shows itself not only in the type of imagery that appears in these works, but in the method employed, which is based on the Surrealist idea of automatic drawing, in which the artist attempts to disengage the conscious mind from the making process in order to allow the unconscious mind to direct the making of an image. At times these paintings almost verge on abstraction; however, as exemplified by "Salazar Vomiting the Homeland", painted in 1960, when Portugal's right-wing dictator Salazar was in power, even when her work veered toward abstraction, a strong narrative element remains in place.