NYRB: Celia Paul presents "Letters to Gwen John," with Jessica Ferri

Celia Paul joins us to present her new book "Letters to Gwen John," in conversation with Jessica Ferri. This virtual event, presented as part of our ongoing series with New York Review Books, took place on Zoom. To purchase a copy of the book (and support Community Bookstore): www.communityb...
About the book:
"Dearest Gwen, I know this letter to you is an artifice. I know you are dead and that I’m alive and that no usual communication is possible between us but, as my mother used to say, 'Time is a strange substance' and who knows really, with our time-bound comprehension of the world, whether there might be some channel by which we can speak to each other, if we only knew how."
Celia Paul’s "Letters to Gwen John" centers on a series of letters addressed to the Welsh painter Gwen John (1876-1939), who has long been a tutelary spirit for Paul. John spent much of her life in France, making art on her own terms and, like Paul, painting mostly women. John’s reputation was overshadowed during her lifetime by her brother, Augustus John, and her lover Auguste Rodin. Through the epistolary form, Paul draws fruitful comparisons between John’s life and her own: their shared resolve to protect the sources of their creativity, their fierce commitment to painting, and the ways in which their associations with older male artists affected the public’s reception of their work.
"Letters to Gwen John" is at once an intimate correspondence, an illuminating portrait of two painters (including full-color plates of both artists’ work), and a writer/artist’s daybook, describing Paul’s first exhibitions in America, her search for new forms, her husband’s diagnosis of cancer, and the onset of the global pandemic. Paul, who first revealed her talents as a writer with her memoir, "Self-Portrait," enters with courage and resolve into new unguarded territory-the artist at present-and the work required to make art out of the turbulence of life.
About our guests:
Celia Paul was born in 1959 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (London), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her major solo exhibitions include "Celia Paul," curated by Hilton Als, at the Yale Center for British Art (2018) and the Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, California (2019); and "Desdemona for Celia" by Hilton at Gallery Met, New York (2015-16). Her work was included in the group exhibition "All Too Human" at Tate Britain (2018). She lives and works in London.
Jessica Ferri is a writer and photographer based in Northern California. Her work has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, NPR, Yahoo!, The Economist, The New Yorker's Page Turner, Time Out New York, and more. She is the author of "Silent Cities New York" and "Silent Cities San Francisco." She is currently at work on her first novel.