Paula MacArthur

Biography

I am a painter, born in Enfield and trained at Royal Academy Schools. In 2009 I moved to Kent and now work from my studio at Rye Creative Centre, East Sussex.

I’ve exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, I was a prizewinner at John Moore’s Painting Prize in 1993 and first prize winner at the National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award in 1989. Other highlights include Made in Britain - National MuseumGdansk Poland (2019), In the Future curated by Rosalind Davis at Collyer Bristow Gallery (2018), Contemporary Masters from Britain touring four museums in China (2017), Slippery & Amorphous London & Brooklyn NYC (2016), Creekside Open selected by Richard Deacon (2015), What the Folk Say - Compton Verney Warwickshire (2011), Four Self-Portrait Artists - Walker Art Gallery Liverpool (1994), Royal Academy Schools Graduates, Grassi Museum Leipzig (1993), Young Contemporaries - Whitworth Art Gallery (1989). Permanent collections include the National Portrait Gallery London, Priseman Seabrook Collection and Jiangsu Art Museum in China and Graham Crowley included his essay on my work ‘Still Light’in his book ‘I Don’t Like Art’

My practice is rooted in the traditions of Memento-Mori and Vanitas Still Life painting. I work with single artifacts which I seek out in museums and historical buildings. I select these treasures instinctively, choosing the things which elicit an emotional and a physical response in me - butterflies, a gasp or a sigh. Through the slow, meditative process of painting, these valuable objects reveal themselves to me, or rather I begin to delve into my subconscious and understand why they resonate with me personally. The resulting paintings, I hope, also resonate more universally; touching upon issues such as materialism, capitalism, feminism and the environment, and broader themes which concern us all, love, beauty and the ephemerality of life.

See Paula’s Lockdown Interview here -

About this work

The crystal paintings shown here were made during lockdown. The glowing forms of the quartz crystal in ‘All these silent moments’ describes an extremely slow growing mineral but it reminds us of both a small, momentary splash in a pool and a vast, exploding supernova. ‘Didn’t I give you nearly everything’ describes thin, fragile gypsum filaments as they expand into a solid yet delicate heart shaped form.

Both canvases were painted slowly and carefully in very thin glazes during lockdown, my approach has changed subtly reflecting the collective feeling of anxiety arising from the pandemic. The crystal forms are beautiful and strange; emerging from the painted void they seem suddenly to mimic the appearance of a virus and it becomes quite ominous. Within a single object our desire to accumulate treasures as tokens of love and displays of wealth is contrasted with the knowledge of our own fragility and ultimate demise.