Paul newton artist biography

Born in Sydney in 1961, Newton is a well-known, much-commissioned portrait artist.
Paul Newton (born 1961) is an Australian artist.
Paul Newton is an Australian artist.

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Paul Newton

Paul Newton (b. 1961), is a Sydney-based portrait painter noted for his ability to capture likeness and sensibility. Newton completed a science degree at the University of Sydney before pursuing his interest in painting at the Julian Ashton Art School. He has been an Archibald Prize finalist eleven times, most recently for his portrait of Rupert Myer AO in 2017. His portrait of comedians John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver (Roy and HG) won the Packers’ Prize and the People’s Choice Award in 2001. Newton has twice been a finalist in the Moran Portrait Prize, and he has twice won first place in the Portrait Society of America’s International Portrait Competition – once for his portrait of David Campese, now one of the most popular paintings in the Portrait Gallery’s collection. Newton’s recent commissions include 32 works concerning the history of Catholicism in Australia for the Domus Australia Chapel in Rome. His portraits of Patrick Corrigan AM, David Gonski AC, Frank Lowy AC and Imelda Roche AO are also in the Portrait Gallery’s collection.

Updated 2018

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Paul Newton Self portrait #2 – dark night of the soul

Paul Newton’s father died in late January after a long battle with emphysema. In the days following his death, Newton found himself unable to sleep, concentrate or work on the commissioned portrait he had on his easel.

‘I remember seeing my haggard, unshaven face reflected in the mirror one morning – I looked dreadful,’ he says. ‘I decided to attempt to capture this image of myself in paint as a way of cathartically dealing with my feelings, by putting them on canvas and objectifying all that I felt. As the portrait developed I could see in it something of my father, the way we are struck by our resemblance to a parent as we ourselves age, and also in the forward leaning posture his illness had forced him to adopt toward the end of his life.

‘“Dark night of the soul” is the title of a poem written by 16th-century mystic St John of the Cross and is a metaphor for the sense of desolation and lack of sensory consolation experienced by the soul at times during the lifelong search for her divine lover,’ says Newton.

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Paul Newton Self-portrait

Paul Newton has been so busy with portrait commissions in New York, where he has recently been painting the president and the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University, that he didn’t have time to think about who he might paint for this year’s Archibald Prize. And so he turned his gaze on himself: only his second self-portrait since he painted one way back in art school days.

A couple of years ago, however, he set up a mirror in his studio and did a few life drawings of himself in preparation for another life drawing he had been commissioned to do. It struck him then that he might one day do a self portrait using a mirror. Not that he ended up using it as much as one might imagine.

‘Because you look at yourself in the mirror a couple of times a day, I’m very familiar with how I look,’ says Newton, ‘so when I was painting myself I wasn’t looking in the mirror a lot of the time. I could recognise instinctively whether I was getting the colours right or not.’ He used a lot of green in the shadows. ‘I’ve got quite pasty white skin,’ he say