Self-Portrait

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

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

Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize **