Celia Paul

Celia Paul is best known for her muted, melancholy self-portraits and paintings of her mother and sisters. While she has also created lush waterscapes, charcoal-on-paper portraits, and paintings of London architectural sites, a keen engagement with light and shadow pervades all her work. Paul was born in India to British parents and studied briefly at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she continues to live and work. As a young woman, she entered a simultaneously formative and destructive 10-year affair with late painter Lucian Freud, for whom she often served as a model. Paul has exhibited in Copenhagen, London, New York, New Haven, and Miami, and her work belongs in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Rubell Museum in Miami.