'Painfully honest on what it means to be a woman who puts art first, no matter what' Olivia Laing

I'm not a portrait painter. If I'm anything, I have always been an autobiographer.

In Self-Portrait, Celia Paul reveals a life truly lived through art. She moves effortlessly through time, in words and images, from her arrival at the Slade School of Fine Art at sixteen, through a profound and intense affair with the older and better-known artist Lucian Freud, to the practices of her present-day studio. This intimate memoir is, at its heart, about a young woman navigating the path to artistic freedom, with all the sacrifices and complications that entails.

'Powerful' Zadie Smith
'Engrossing' Vogue
'Captivating... Mesmerising' New York Times

**Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize **

Captivating... Mesmerizing... Paul's powers of observation are keen and often ruthless. -- Jennifer Szalai * New York Times *
A poetic, sometimes painfully honest memoir. -- Tim Adams * Observer *
I loved the painter Celia Paul’s memoir Self-Portrait. It’s fascinating for its account of her long-term lover Lucian Freud (he emerges as the ultimate man-baby, by turns charismatic, needy and breathtakingly selfish), but it’s also painfully honest on what it means to be a woman who puts art first, no matter what. -- Olivia Laing * New Statesman *
The publication of this, her first book, is of great significance... Having recently returned to writing again, she has found a new confidence, in words, in herself and in her painting... No longer wanting to remain simply a part of Freud’s story, she wanted to make him part of her story, a narrative about her life as a painter. ... Paul’s memoir therefore seems fresh, and comes as a surprise. -- Frances Spalding * Guardian, *Book of the Week* *
A story of obsession and manipulation that sends our feelings on a rollercoaster... [Self-Portrait] turns into a sort of myth about the misuse of fame and the male ego, about the struggles faced by creative women, about the body in all its guises. Like a myth, it unfolds with confusions and contradictions, a terrible inevitability and many, many discomfiting truths. -- Jan Dalley * Financial Times *
In this fascinating memoir, you watch a woman being gradually eviscerated by love-torture. Illustrated with Celia Paul's paintings, it is partly a pitilessly honest re-living of that ten-year episode of her life, and partly a meditation on the eternal problem of how to juggle lovesickness and an artistic career. It's also an enthralling examination of female self-esteem: how it can be slowly destroyed and, eventually, rescued. -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Daily Mail, *Book of the Week* *
Paul is one of the most thoughtful and significant living women artists and Self-Portrait helps suggest why… Her painting and writing are of a piece — closely observed, not seeking to flatter, and with people always as her focus. -- Michael Prodger * Sunday Times *Books of the Year* *
Beguiling… Self-Portrait illuminates how supremely difficult it is to make an artistic practice work alongside the demands of care-giving and home-making… The author draws on the rare reflective power she exhibits in her art, to communicate what, she found, painting could not. -- Amie Corry * Times Literary Supplement *
Compelling... The story she relates through images and words has the feel of a painter’s parable, in which hardship, sacrifice and solitude lead, eventually, to something like grace... Paul is uninterested in making herself appear more palatable for the benefit of a reader. She accounts for her life like a person peeling off her bandages, often asking her audience to share in her experiences of difficulty and hurt. -- Rosanna McLaughlin * Frieze *
Fascinating... Paul's paintings, interspersed throughout the book, are quite extraordinary - ambiguous and mystical... Her style is passionate [and] direct. -- Joanna Kavenna * Literary Review *

Celia Paul is recognised as one of the most important painters working in Britain today. She was born in India in 1959, before moving to England as a young child. Her major solo exhibitions include Celia Paul, curated by Hilton Als, at Yale Center for British Art (2018) and The Huntington (2019); Desdemona for Celia by Hilton, Gallery Met, New York (2015–16); and Gwen John and Celia Paul, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2012–13). Her work was included in the group exhibition All Too Human at Tate Britain (2018), and is in many collections, including the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Saatchi Collection and Metropolitan Museum, New York.