Paul is the author of Oil Painting - Controversial Views and OP-CV Exercises and Projects; he is editor of the 2026 project OP-CV: for Aspiring Artists by Bryony Knight. ​

 

Years before selecting A-level subjects, Paul decided that science subjects needed to be learned at school and university but the arts could be taken to the desired level through less structured study and practice later in life.

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Following a brief career in banking he trained to become a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a director of consultants WS Atkins, and earned his fees as a technical due diligence advisor on major projects … for banks.

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A trigger to learn to paint in oils occurred when Paul saw Paul Sérusier’s Le Talisman of 1888 on its first hanging at Le Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and realised that great art could be created without necessarily being able to draw.

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A most inappropriately named, but thoroughly enjoyable course, Simply Oils by Martin Kinnear in 2011 led to Paul undertaking an intense programme of courses culminating in immersion in two of Martin Kinnear’s diploma courses.

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Paul held his first solo exhibition at the Cultuur Hal in Bruges, Belgium, in 2017. From 2015 he was based in Bruges with the luxury of his own dedicated oil painting atelier.

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Involvement with the Royal Academy of the Arts (RA) in London commenced with funding the Maire Ragnhild Hollingsworth Oil Painting Prize at the RA Summer Exhibitions for 25 years from 2023, the year that Maire, his wife of 54 years, died.

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Involvement at the RA includes judging for the annual prize alongside diploma course colleagues Bryony Knight and Gaenor Farren-Smith who are also involved with the OP-CV projects.

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Paul’s programme of painting has developed largely into Abstract Expressionism (see Red Polder on the easel above) but other projects have been more representational including a commission for local supermarket Carrefour (see work in progress below).

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The OP-CV project has been funded for the foreseeable future. Developments of the project are anticipated.