About Paul Lloyd
Bio
Hi, I’m Paul Lloyd. I’m a painter based in Dorset, UK, and I make art about what it means to be human. Especially the bits we don’t often talk about.
I came back to painting at 57, after years of pushing parts of myself aside just to get through life. After a long silence, a silence shaped by depression, by pretending, by trying to fit in, I picked up a brush again. It wasn’t just a creative act; it was a reclaiming of myself. I’d learned how to put on a good face but I also knew something had to change.
Painting became my way back to myself. Not in a tidy, inspirational quote kind of way but more like a slow, honest reckoning. With who I really am. With what I feel. With the masks I’d worn for years.
Now, through layered acrylics, I make work that explores identity, emotion, and the courage it takes to live without pretending. My current series, Removing Our Masks, is about the parts of ourselves we’ve hidden to fit in, and what starts to happen when we let them be seen.
If you’ve ever felt like you had to shrink yourself to be accepted, this work is for you.
About Paul.
For Paul, painting is not about perfection or performance. It's a process. Sometimes messy. Often surprising. Always honest. His approach is intuitive rather than planned. He doesn’t impose meaning; he uncovers it. Like memory, like healing, like becoming more fully human.
“Art has always been a part of who I am. Even as a kid, I was always drawing, building, imagining things. But like many people, I grew up and got on with life. And somewhere along the way, I lost touch with that part of myself.”
Through richly layered acrylics, Paul’s work invites you beneath the surface of the canvas, the self, and the stories we tell to survive. Each painting is a kind of excavation, working with layers (painting, scraping, covering, revealing) mirroring the way truth surfaces in our lives.
Sometimes the image he begins with disappears entirely under new emotion. Sometimes a fragment stays. Each mark is a conversation with what’s real.
His series Removing Our Masks is both personal and universal. It asks: Who am I, really, when I stop pretending? And it dares you to ask the same.
Artist statment
My paintings explore what happens when we stop pretending.
Much of my work is rooted in my own experience of depression. Feeling lost, disconnected, or buried under roles that didn’t fit. Painting helped me come back to myself. It gave me a place to feel what I feel, without apology.
We’re taught to hide. To blend in. To be who people need us to be. Removing Our Masks came from the realisation that we often trade authenticity for belonging and lose ourselves in the process.
I paint in layers. Not just with colour, but with emotion. Sometimes I start with an idea and it dissolves under the weight of something truer. I scrape it back. I start again. What’s left is rarely what I planned, but it’s always honest.
I don’t paint to impress. I paint to tell the truth: the messy, tender kind that lives under the surface. If my work helps someone else feel less alone, feel seen in their own cracks and becoming, that’s everything to me.
Why collect Paul’s Work
Paul’s work speaks to the hidden places in all of us.
His work is textured, layered, and emotionally open. It doesn’t try to be something it’s not. It invites you in. It makes space for your own feelings. It gives you permission to be messy, to be honest, to just be.
Collectors are drawn to his paintings not just for their textured beauty, but for the way they make you feel: cracked open, gently witnessed, and deeply seen.
Each piece is a conversation with the self. A mirror, not a mask. A reminder that healing isn’t linear, and wholeness often looks like something beautifully undone.