Paul Gribbin

About the artist

Paul began painting as a young man in Falmouth, surrounded by artists and inspired by nature and the distinctive Cornish light. After seeing works by Cézanne and Morandi at exhibitions in London, he became deeply influenced by their landscapes. He then spent several years fully immersed in his studies at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Having finished at Oxford, he moved back to London, working as a professional photographer for a while, before settling into a career in criminal defence law which lasted twenty years.

In 2002 he took up painting again, working from photographs of remote locations. One is the troglodyte village of Bollène in the Vaucluse in south-east France, where caves carved into soft molasse sandstone were occupied continuously from the Neolithic period through Roman times and the Middle Ages until 1914. Another is the abandoned quarries of Crazannes, where brilliant white limestone was extracted for nearly two thousand years from Roman times onwards. The abandoned stone chambers have become a refuge for rare plants such as maidenhair ferns.

When not in France, he draws inspiration locally, from Battersea Park and the Isabella Plantation in Richmond. He strives to imbue his work with magical atmospheres; sometimes he thinks he succeeds.