Paul Becker
Mother and Child, n.d.
Pencil on paper
Unframed: 21 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches (54.5 X 19 cm)
Framed: 77 1/2 x 40 1/2 x 5 inches (30.5 x 16 x 2 cm)

Courtesy of Andrew Dubow

Selected by Rosario Güiraldes 

Paul Becker (b. 1967, Windsor, UK) is an artist and writer based in London. A painter for over thirty years, his practice has increasingly expanded into drawing, particularly over the past six years. Recent solo exhibitions include Andrew Dubow, New York (2026), Marc Jancou, Switzerland (2023) and Mackintosh Lane, London (2022). In 2020, Becker received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and was Abbey Fellow in Painting at the British School at Rome.

Becker’s work is deeply psychological, with figures emerging entirely from his imagination rather than from photographs or other visual references. His process often begins intuitively in pencil, through making, erasing and redrawing until forms begin to emerge. This process of drawing has, in turn, come to inform the way he approaches painting.

In Mother and Child, two elongated figures appear closely entwined, rendered through delicate pencil lines and softly worked colour. The larger figure bends over the smaller, suggesting intimacy, protection and dependence. Yet their exaggerated proportions and mask-like faces lend the image a slightly otherworldly quality, balancing tenderness with a sense of unease. The visible pencil marks retain something of Becker’s searching process, allowing the relationship between the two figures- and the narrative surrounding them - to remain deliberately open.