Self-Portrait

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

**Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2019**

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

Self-Portrait reveals a life truly lived through art. In this short, intimate memoir, Celia Paul moves effortlessly through time in words and images, folding in her past and present selves. From her move to 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, she meticulously assembles the surprising, beautiful, haunting scenes of a life. Paul brings to her prose the same qualities that she brings to her art: a brutal honesty, a delicate but powerful intensity, and an acute eye for visual detail.

At its heart, this is a book about a young woman becoming an artist, with all the sacrifices and complications that entails. As she moves out of Freud's shadow, and navigates a path to artistic freedom, Paul's power and identity as an artist emerge from the page.

Self-Portrait is a uniquely arresting, poignant book, and a work of art and literature by a singular talent.

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

© Celia Paul 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

Captivating... Mesmerizing... Paul's powers of observation are keen and often ruthless.
New York Times
A poetic, sometimes painfully honest memoir.
Observer
I loved the painter Celia Paulu2019s memoir Self-Portrait. Itu2019s 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 itu2019s also painfully honest on what it means to be a woman who puts art first, no matter what.
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 Freudu2019s story, she wanted to make him part of her story, a narrative about her life as a painter. ... Paulu2019s memoir therefore seems fresh, and comes as a surprise.
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.
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.
Daily Mail, *Book of the Week*
Paul is one of the most thoughtful and significant living women artists and Self-Portrait helps suggest whyu2026 Her painting and writing are of a piece u2014 closely observed, not seeking to flatter, and with people always as her focus.
Sunday Times *Books of the Year*
Beguilingu2026 Self-Portrait illuminates how supremely difficult it is to make an artistic practice work alongside the demands of care-giving and home-makingu2026 The author draws on the rare reflective power she exhibits in her art, to communicate what, she found, painting could not.
Times Literary Supplement
Compelling... The story she relates through images and words has the feel of a painteru2019s 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.
Frieze
Fascinating... Paul's paintings, interspersed throughout the book, are quite extraordinary - ambiguous and mystical... Her style is passionate [and] direct.
Literary Review

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