History & Background
Ideas & Inspirations
Paul Horton wanted to be an artist for as long as he can remember. After studying drawing and painting at Bournville School of Art, he set out on a career within the printing industry, managing to combine this with an ever-developing style of work in both fine art and illustration, selling and exhibiting his work at regular intervals. It wasn’t until the autumn of 1997 that he turned professional, dedicating for the first time ever, all of his energy into art. Paul held a major one-man retrospective exhibition in the summer of 1998 entitled ‘All in a Life’s Work’, representing his artistic journey. In October 2013, Paul’s debut museum exhibition, Love & Hope, took place at Waterhall, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Growing up in Birmingham in the sixties and seventies has given Paul many memories to draw upon; it has given him his identity and working class ethic. The working man in Paul’s industrial street scenes is an iconic figure reflecting the industrial age, but it could be in any city or any town. Art is Paul’s life, a passion within him. He feels that he is on a journey creating new and exciting image and adding a unique and inspired view of the world. As Paul started painting so young, he cannot recall a definitive point of inspiration, but from about the age of ten he was inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites. His early paintings were figurative studies in the Pre-Raphaelite style; he has always enjoyed the challenge of drawing and painting people. Life is a mosaic of different memories, we all experience so many emotions from great joy to deep sorrow, from the nostalgic to the magical - these experiences are the source of Paul’s paintings, offering universal themes that he hopes will appeal to popular imagination.
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