Celia Paul (born 11 November 1959) is an Indian-born British painter. Paul's mainly known for her impressionistic work, which she developed during her education at the Slade School of Fine Art.
Celia Paul was born on 11 November 1959 in Thiruvananthapuram (formerly called Trivandrum), South India.
From 1976 to 1981 she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she met Lucian Freud who was a visiting tutor. She had a relationship with Freud between 1978 and 1988 and has a son by him, Frank Paul (born 10 December 1984), who is also an artist. Spouse, Steven Kupfer (married 2011 - 2021).
Paul was represented by Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London from 1984 to 1986 and then by Marlborough Fine Art, London from 1989 to 2014. She has been represented by Victoria Miro, London since May 2014.[1]
A solo exhibition of new work by the artist titled Celia Paul: Memory and Desire took place at Victoria Miro in London, 6 April–14 May 2022. The exhibition coincided with the publication of Letters to Gwen John, a new book by the artist published by Jonathan Cape and New York Review Books which centres on a series of letters addressed to the painter Gwen John (1876–1939), who has long been a tutelary spirit for Paul.
Paul wrote her autobiography Self-Portrait which was released in 2019 and well-received by national newspapers including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The New York Review of Books.
Celia Paul's paintings are intimate depictions of people and places that she knows well. She does no portrait commissions. Her paintings have a haunting otherworldly feeling. "Throughout all her work the sense of sight is associated with a world of potential, within. This is how a sense of the ineffable is able to be communicated".[2] Paul worked on a series of paintings of her mother from 1977 to 2007 and since then she has concentrated on her four sisters, especially her sister Kate. "…[T]he real strength of Paul's project becomes apparent with time: the concentrated emotional energy of chronicling a family and its subtle shifts over many years".[3] Recently her work has taken a new direction and she has been focussing on landscape and the sea. "[S]he …is a creator of subterranean images. Her canvases are Impressionism in conversation with modernism- objective but felt".[4]
British Museum, London; National Portrait Gallery, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Saatchi Collection, London; Abbot Hall, Kendal; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut; Carlsberg Foundation, Copenhagen; Frissiras Museum, Athens; Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Brunswick, Germany; Morgan Library , New York; New Hall Art Collection, Cambridge
