Self-Portrait

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 *
An impressive portrait of the artist as a young woman...candid, non-judgemental and illuminating. -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Oldie *
Engrossing. * Vogue *
[An] insightful, unflinchingly honest account, she [Celia Paul] describes her need for space to work and think, her emotionally tempestuous 10-year relationship with Lucian Freud. -- Eithne Farry * Sunday Express *
Beautifully written, and thoughtful -- Joanna Moorhead * Tablet *
A deeply affecting and lyrical self-portrait of the artist as a young woman, which quietly builds in strength and luminosity, culminating in a glorious state of serenity and self-knowledge. -- Chloe Aridjis
An insight into the white knuckle determination needed to make great art, and why it is so few women painters reach the heights. An astoundingly honest book, moving and engrossing – full of truths. -- Esther Freud
Self-Portrait demonstrates a painter’s startling command of language and her moral power of seeing the world concretely and without subjectivity. Celia Paul’s account of the young woman artist’s struggle towards expression is a story that exposes some of the deepest wounds in our cultural psyche: the ambiguous power of the male artist, the vulnerability and isolation of the woman driven to create, the question of who owns her, of her very body and what it’s for. Written with beauty and candour but without anger, Self-Portrait will yet arouse indignation in its readers, for its delicate exposure of what occurs in the pursuit and misuse of artistic status. -- Rachel Cusk
Self-Portrait by Celia Paul is a valuable document. The precision and intimacy of her writing is as impressive as the empathy and power of her painting. I feel that this book will be important to many readers. -- Frank Auerbach
A wonderfully honest and thoughtful book, unburdened by anger or blame or the need to justify, even though it is conjuring up the presence of such a difficult and complicated man. The words make pictures in my head, just as the pictures make words. -- Julia Blackburn
I loved Celia Paul’s memoir. It reminded me what it felt like to be a very young painter – and also just very young. -- Chantal Joffe