Celia Paul

Celia Paul (born 1959) is an Indian-born British artist.

Biography

Celia Paul was born on 11 November 1959 in Thiruvananthapuram (formerly called Trivandrum), South India. She is a British Citizen.

From 1976–81 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.^[1] Celia Paul appears in several paintings by Freud, including Girl in a Striped Nightshirt (1983–85; Tate, London).^[2]

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.^[3]

Style and influences

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".^[4] 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".^[5] 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".^[6]

Solo exhibitions

• "desdemona for celia by hilton", Gallery Met, New York, 2015
• "Celia Paul", Victoria Miro, 2014
• "Gwen John and Celia Paul: Painters in Parallel", Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, 2012-2013
• "Celia Paul", Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 2005
• "Celia Paul: Stillness", Abbot Hall, Kendal, 2004
• Regular solo exhibitions at Marlborough Fine Art, 1991-2013
• "Celia Paul", Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 1986

Group exhibitions

• "NO MAN'S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection", Rubell Family Collection, Miami, 2015 - 2016
• "Forces in Nature", curated by Hilton Als; Victoria Miro, London, 2015
• Work presented at Frieze Art Fair, London, 2014 by Victoria Miro
• "Cinematic Visions: Painting at the Edge of Reality", curated by James Franco, Isaac Julien and Glenn Scott Wright, Victoria Miro, London, 2013
• "Self-Consciousness", curated by Peter Doig and Hilton Als, VeneKlasen/Werner, Berlin, 2010
• "Psycho", curated by Danny Moynihan, Anne Faggionato, London, 2000
• "School of London", Odette Gilbert, London, 1989
• "British Figurative Art: Sickert to Bacon", Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1989
• "School of London: Bacon to Bevan", Musée Maillol, Paris, 1998
• "September", curated by Peter Doig, The approach, London, 1997

Films and interviews

• In Conversation with Hilton Als, Victoria Miro, London, 8 July 2014
• Artists at War: Walter Sickert, directed by Danny Katz, 2014
• Woman's Hour, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 1 October 2012
• The Last Art Film, directed by Jake Auerbach, 2010
• Lucian Freud, directed by Randall Wright, 2011
• Lucian Freud, directed by Jake Auerbach, 2004

Public collections

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.

Further reading

• Hilton Als, "Celia at Home", in Celia Paul (London: Victoria Miro, 2014)
• Rowan Williams, (introduction) Gwen John and Celia Paul: Painters in Parallel (Chichester: Pallant House Gallery, 2012)
• Catherine Lampert, "Eighty Steps", in Celia Paul (London: Marlborough Fine Art, 2011)
• Frank Paul, (introductions) Celia Paul (Sheffield: Graves Art Gallery, 2005) and Celia Paul (London: Marlborough Fine Art, 2013)
• William Feaver, (introduction) Celia Paul: Stillness (Kendal: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 2004)
• Alistair Hicks, The School of London: Resurgence of Contemporary Painting (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1989)

References

1. Moorhead, Joanna (12 October 2012). "'Lucian wanted us to have a baby'".
2. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/freud-girl-in-a-striped-nightshirt-t13719 22 May 2005
3. "Victoria Miro - Artists".
4. Angus Cook, Introduction to Celia Paul: Recent Work at Marlborough Fine Art, October 1991
5. Jackie Wullschlager: Financial Times, 6 July 2014
6. "Letter from London: Celia Paul and Henri Matisse". 28 July 2014.

External links

• Celia Paul at Victoria Miro