We are both painters. We can connect to each other through images, in our own unvoiced language. But I will try and reach you with words. Through talking to you I may come alive and begin to speak.

Celia Paul has felt a lifelong connection to the artist Gwen John. There are extraordinary parallels in their lives and work. Both have always made art on their own terms. Both were involved with older male artists. Both worked hard to keep themselves and the sacred flame of their creativity from being extinguished by others.

Letters to Gwen John is Paul’s imagined correspondence with this groundbreaking painter. These intimate, passionate, haunting letters offer a unique form of memoir and conversation, and an unforgettable insight into a life devoted to making art.

‘Beautiful, tender, and riveting. I have taken this book into my heart’
CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT

‘A beguiling, singular work of art – a portrait of two lives, entwined through time and space’
DAILY TELEGRAPH

We are both painters. We can connect to each other through images, in our own unvoiced language. But I will try and reach you with words. Through talking to you I may come alive and begin to speak.

Celia Paul has felt a lifelong connection to the artist Gwen John. There are extraordinary parallels in their lives and work. Both have always made art on their own terms. Both were involved with older male artists. Both worked hard to keep themselves and the sacred flame of their creativity from being extinguished by others.

Letters to Gwen John is Paul’s imagined correspondence with Gwen John, whose life and work have loomed so large in hers. These intimate, passionate, haunting letters allow Paul to reach across eras, to weigh up the sacrifices she has made, and to explore the rich possibilities of a life apart. With illuminating insights into the life and work of Gwen John, Letters to Gwen John is a unique form of memoir and conversation, and an unforgettable insight into a life devoted to making art.

In Self-Portrait, Celia Paul reveals a life truly lived through art. She moves effortlessly through time, in words and images, from her arrival at 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. This intimate memoir is, at its heart, about a young woman navigating the path to artistic freedom, with all the sacrifices and complications that entails.

‘Powerful’ Zadie Smith
‘Engrossing’ Vogue
‘Captivating… Mesmerising’ New York Times

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