Celia Paul

"When I first met Lucian he wasn’t that famous. He was notorious, but he did not have a big international reputation or anything. He was a genuinely Dostoevskian character it seemed to me, living much …"

"When I first started doing self-portraits – and I didn’t start until I was in my 40s, quite late – I did these portraits where my hand was kind of stretched out toward the canvas, as if about to paint…"

"From the earliest memory every day started with prayer and ended with prayer…And it is still in my bloodstream, even though I am not conventionally religious. I am not good at belonging to groups. But…"

"Everyone was saying that painting was dead, and really believing it. It was a very difficult time for me. I felt unsupported and isolated…"