Paul is a Birmingham based artist. Paul has been teaching on HE Fine Art courses since 2007, on BA & MA programmes Including Birmingham School as Art as well at Loughborough University School of Creative Arts. He has been an early career mentor for artists through Stryx Gallery in Birmingham.
He has exhibited in an curated many projects over the years and been the recipient of several Arts Council Grant for the Arts awards.
Paul is a member of Contemporary British Painting and writes their artist of the month interviews.
Paul is represented by Vivienne Roberts Projects and Aleph Contemporary. He has work in permanent collections, including The New Art Gallery Walsall, The Prizeman Seabrook Collection and the Jiangsu Art Museum in China.
Paul Newman’s practice of painting and performance weaves together a tableau of motifs including 18th & 19th-century landscape paintings with 20th century industry, architecture and cinematic monsters like Frankenstein’s and the human fly and The Ford Escort van. The work explores themes around relics of heritage, ruin and decay. From the Romantic depiction of ruins in 18th – 19th century European landscape painting, to urban decay, dereliction, anxieties are explored that are associated with rapid Capitalist Urban regeneration and threat, such as to the sustainability of artist’s studio space. The characters in the work journey through dreamlike landscapes which are on the periphery change and transformation.
Paul has also been investigating the relationship between the studio space and exhibition space, where art is made and art is displayed. It was the theme of a solo exhibition 'Stage' in 2015 at mac Birmingham. It is also a research proposal idea that connects his own studio practice with his interviews for Contemporary British Painting 'Artist of the Month.'
Paul has designed and presented lectures and seminars on topics including, painting as an interdisciplinary practice, performance fictions, site specific practices and interpreting art works as well as the artist's statement.
Paul currently teaches on studio practice and writing modules for the BA Fine Art course.
Recent exhibitions
2025
- ‘Unquiet Landscape’, Yorkshire Artspace‘,
- ‘Against the Smooth’ (curated),
- The Hive, Birmingham,
- 'Solihull Surrealists'.
2024
'Assembly', Rye Arts Centre.
2023
- ‘Worlds Away; Art, Nature & Wellbeing‘ Midlands Arts Centre (mac Birmingham)
- and ‘In Ruin’ solo artist in residence at Stryx, Birmingham.
Previous exhibitions
2017
‘Contemporary Masters from Britain’; a five-museum touring show in China.
2015
‘Stage’, solo show at Midlands Art Centre, (mac Birmingham).