Paula MacArthur - Studio 201
‘All these silent moments’, 2000. Oil on canvas, 100x100cm
‘I see my work as a contemporary interpretation of traditional memento mori & vanitas painting. My subject is light and love, and the fragility of life.
Hunting in historical buildings, I select objects which are powerfully evocative and elicit a physical response; a tingle, a gasp, a gut feeling. Focussing in on the essential details, scaling up onto canvas, working with oils; bold colour in thin glazes which stay wet for long enough for me to draw and redraw until something of the original experience is found. The liquid paint drips down the canvas creating a sense of impermanence, a sense of time passing, of lives lived. Through continual refining and adjustments the resulting work is evocative of my original experience; stripped back to the essentials the image partially disassociates from the original object and opens up to allow subjective interpretation.'
Paula MacArthur trained at The Royal Academy Schools where she was awarded the RA Schools Prize for Painting and Turps Art School.
Solo exhibitions include Verse at Kaleidoscope Gallery, Sevenoaks in 2018 & Infinitely Precious Things at VJB Arts, 60 Threadneedle Street in 2015. Group exhibitions include Beep Painting Prize 2020 - Swansea, Vitalistic Fantasies - London 2020, Made in Britain – Gdansk 2019, PaintLounge – Berlin 2018, Slippery & Amorphous – London & NYC 2016, Zeitgeist Open - London 2014, 20 Painters – Phoenix Brighton 2014, Open West 2013 – Newark Park & Wilson Art Gallery Cheltenham, The Perfect Nude – Wimbledon Space, Exeter Phoenix & Charlie Smith London 2012, What The Folk Say – Compton Verney 2011.
Paula's work is held in several permanent collections including Jiangsu Museum of Art – China, Goodnestone Park - Kent, Priseman Seabrook Collection, National Portrait Gallery - London , Baron & Baroness von Oppenheim. In 1993 Paula was a prizewinner at John Moores 18 & in 1989, whilst still a student, she won the NPG John Player Portrait Award.
Paula is also chair of the artist led group Contemporary British Painting and coordinates the CBP Painting Prize as part of this role. She occasionally curates ‘PaintLounge’ exhibitions and conversation events and is a BA Painting Tutor for The Open College of the Arts.
'All the love that's in my heart', 2018. Oil on canvas, 100x100cm
'And blazed through the sky', 2020. Oil on canvas, 100x100cm
'Let me be your eyes', 2012. Oil on canvas, 140x140cm
'Who's to say that I'm unhappy', 2014. Oil on canvas, 300x200cm