Celia Paul Interviewed by Christopher le Brun

One of the most important painters working in Britain today Celia Paul reflects on a life lived through her art and on why so few women reach the top.

Paul’s memoir follows her life from her move to the Slade School of Fine Art at 16, through an intense affair with the older and better-known artist Lucien Freud to her emergence today as a powerful artist with her own identity. The book is about how a young woman becomes an artist and the sacrifices and complications involved.

‘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

Paul was born in India and moved to England as a child. Her work is held in the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Saatchi Collection and Metropolitan Museum, New York. Here she talks to painter, sculptor and printmaker Professor Christopher le Brun, president of the Royal Academy of Arts between 2011 and 2019.