I was born in London, where I dropped out of art school to become an architectural model-maker. Later I travelled, landing for 18 years in Berlin to live an alternative life - as far as possible within modern society. My interests and practice are broad, so it's difficult to describe my work in a nutshell. I once considered myself a poet, later a painter, other times a sculptor. Now I am arguably a conceptual artist, someone to whom ideas and process are as important as finished artworks.

Subversion connects most things I do. If it's not in some way subversive, it's decoration. Art is not always about communication. It can have much to do with deficit of communication, awkwardness; instinctual reflex against overwhelming odds. Police singer Sting sang of poets, priests and politicians:

"And when (words) eloquence escapes me
Their logic ties me up and rapes me
De do do do, de da da da
Is all I want to say to you
De do do do, de da da da
Their innocence will pull me through."

I tend to mix disciplines and blur boundaries. Some of my work is discomforting, some deceptively pretty. A lot of it is story-telling, however opaque the story may be. Visually, I will never leave behind my childhood fascination with the surreal and the fantastic. Making art is always an exploration. If one loses the buzz connected to discovery, let's say through manufacture of work because it is popular, then one cannot be making significant art. 

I've followed various themes over the years, returning to key ones at intervals, but am also inclined at times to completely change direction and/or method. This is because I am still learning, still growing. Which makes me, for better or worse, unpredictable. Perhaps I'm easily bored. In a brighter light, my mind constantly seeks challenge.

​Puzzle-solving has been an underlying factor in the making process since a 1999 painting series called ​Learning Games For Babies. I would spend as long studying a canvas in progress as I would work on it. Now, because I juggle with various ideas at the same time, some of these project pages are not complete. Some never will be. Nothing is ever really finished - everything I do, in whatever format, is a sketch, a work in progress. A puzzle yet to be conquered. Which is how I see life, I suppose.

This year I completed a two month solo exhibition & residency at the West Gallery on the Isle of Wight. It was recycling art, involving lots of woodwork, integrating rotted or broken parts, assembled with hand tools. Grandly presented rubbish, one could say. (In my model-making days, working with plastics to fractions of millimetres, we would have used engineering machinery. My former colleagues would be aghast at this shoddiness.)

I am not an artist who flourishes in solitary confinement. I enjoy collaborations with all kinds of people. My wife MM and I have been working for some years on what we call Temporary Human Installations, plotting a new course I could not have taken alone. We have lately collaborated with artist Karen Karen, who's interest in film has encouraged me to take up again a media I have long neglected.       

​As well as making art and occasionally performing, I have also set up and run off-spaces in Berlin and Zurich, so I've experience as a curator, specialising in exhibition & events design. These days I'm looking for galleries in which to exhibit, especially in the UK, and am always interested in residencies and competitions to enter.

Oh, and I'm looking for partners with whom to open an alternative high-street gallery, supporting itself through workshops, sales of quality works made on and off site, and donations. (Get in touch to find out more.)

ORIGINAL PAINTINGS BY PARADOX PAUL

Not many items in this online shop. Never-the-less, it is a real shop and you can buy these real works.
(Please be patient while I work out the technicalities of this new page.)