Self-Portrait

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 intimate short smemoir, 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 16, through a profound and intense affair with the older and better-known artist Lucian Freud, to the practises 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 book.

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

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.