Paul Critchley

I was born in 1960 in Rainford, a village in the European state of England.

In 1982, three years after finishing art school, I decided that the best postgraduate course would be to live outside academia and go somewhere where I didn’t speak the language, so I moved to West Berlin. I knew no one, the isolation was beautiful, the city full of history, everything was a challenge, nothing was predictable, and every painting was an adventure. I worked in a bar serving the soldiers who were Rudolf Hess’s prison guards. In the following years I have lived in France, Holland, Spain, the US, three months in Russia and now 15 years in Farindola, Abruzzo. During my post-graduate period I have participated in 35 individual exhibitions, 75 art fairs and 195 group exhibitions including the 57th Venice Biennale at Palazzo Mora in 2017.