Artists

Paul Emsley is a British artist who lived and worked in South African until 1996. He trained at the Cape Technical College and worked as a graphic designer, a freelance illustrator and lectured in drawing and painting at the Department of Creative Arts at Stellenbosch University for many years. On his return to England in 1996, he gave up teaching in order to focus on his own artwork. Emsley has worked in oil, acrylic and watercolour, conté and a wide variety of graphic media, with more recent works in acrylic and spray paint. He is best known for his large, hyper-realistic and detailed images of people, animals and flowers. In 2007, Emsley won First Prize in the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London and he was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in 2009 to paint a portrait of Sir V. S. Naipaul. Other notable portraits are of Nelson Mandela, painted in 2010, and the first official portrait of HRH The Duchess of Cambridge which was completed in 2013. His style changed completely in 2019. Emsley has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in England, including numerous exhibitions at the Royal Academy, in the United States of America and South Africa. He was represented on the 1982 and 1985 Cape Town Triennial exhibitions and received an award on the Standard Bank National Drawing competition in 1987. A Retrospective Exhibition of his work was held in 2012 at the Sasol Art Gallery in Stellenbosch. His work can be found in most public collections in South Africa, The National Portrait Gallery and The British Museum in London, and in Chicago. He is represented by the Redfern Gallery in England and retains a presence in South Africa where he is represented by Everard Read.