‘When I wake up, the first things I see from my bed are these huge figures of the Muses carved into the triangular summit of the pediment.’ – Celia Paul 

Celia Paul’s art stems from a deep connection with subject matter and is quiet, contemplative and ultimately moving in its profound attention to detail and deeply-felt spirituality. She is renowned for her intimate depictions of people and places she knows well, among them her home and studio opposite the British Museum, the subject of Room, Great Russell Street, Morning, 2020. In this highly atmospheric work, the simple architecture of the interior becomes transfigured by the play of light, a physical space becoming powerfully psychological.

Born in 1959 in Trivandrum, India, Celia Paul lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Celia Paul, curated by Hilton Als (Pulitzer Prize-winning author, staff writer and theatre critic for The New Yorker and associate professor of writing at Columbia University), which originated at the Yale Centre for British Art in 2018 and subsequently toured to The Huntington; and Desdemona for Celia by Hilton, at the Gallery Met, New York (2015–16). Paul’s paintings were also included in All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life at Tate Britain, 2018. Last year, the artist published her memoir Self-Portrait, praised by notable critics, including Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books. Paul has recently finished working with filmmaker Jake Auberbach on a documentary about her life.