The profound impact of a holiday in Italy spent looking at Piero della Francesco’s masterpieces took Celia Read by surprise. It lead her to try to re-explore for herself the meaning of the Christian narrative that had imbued her childhood, and which she rebelled against in adolescence. Wondering how people from different cultures and religions view the great religious masterpieces of Western Civilization, she meditated on the insights and inspiration from her own heritage, whilst reading and learning from others.

She painted the first works in this series ‘Threshhold’ I – IV in a remote part of Madagascar, and found herself embarked on a mission to find ways to celebrate and give a form to the sacred in a secular society. In these works, which she calls ‘A Glimpse of the Mysteries’, we can feel her commitment to seeking a new way to allow that which is deeply mysterious to inhabit her work, endeavouring to express it with loving care. This may sound gentle, but that is to ignore the passion and strenuous activity that charges the work with energy. Born and educated in England, Celia Read studied in Portugal and worked in Brazil before training first as a probation officer and then as a psychoanalytic therapist in London. After qualifying at the London Centre for Psychotherapy she studied art at Putney School of Art, Sir John Cass and Central St.Martin’s l984-91. She set up her studio in Park Studios, North London in 1992 and has had many solo and group exhibitions since her first solo show at the Freud Museum in 1993. Her present work shows her in full strength, creating a powerful series of highly charged works.

Celia lives in London with her husband Tom Read, and has studios in Finsbury Park and Andalucia. Her work is to be found in many public and private collections, both in the UK and abroad.