PAUL GREGORY

IMAGES FROM “THE LORD OF THE RINGS” by JRR TOLKIEN AND OTHER TALES: 1978-2006

Melkor

It was in the late 1970's that Paul Gregory started on his journey to describe, onto great canvases, his vision of Tolkien's mythical world of "The Lord of the Rings". Paul's dedication to the monumentally of Tolkien's gothic tale, created at the end of the 2nd Word War, allows us to enter the idyllic landscape of the Middle Earth, where peace is threatened by dark forces of devastating evil.

In 1983, Paul was given a touring exhibition throughout Britain of his Tolkien series. This exhibition was organised by Sotheby's Belgravia and culminated at the Edinburgh Festival. As a result, he was offered an exhibition at the Barbican in London in 1984. Over the last 30 years, Paul has worked on the rest of the series.

His complete Tolkien series was exhibited for the first time at L'univers des Fées, an exhibition at the Abbaye de Daoulas, near Brest, Brittany, France December 2002 - February 2003.

At the 2007 Stockholm exhibition, the public were able to view the complete series to date for the first time,  framed in magnificent and monumental hand-carved frames.

PAUL GREGORY

Paul Raymond Gregory was born in Derby in 1949, the son of a builder. Although he was encouraged by his art teacher at school, where he created paintings less conventional than his peers, he is totally self-taught. After Paul left school, he opened an art gallery and spent a great deal of time with contemporary artists. It was about this time he considered producing a series of paintings from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings which had fired his imagination as a youngster and inspired him toward the world of fantasy. But it was to be a some time before he would start his first canvas depicting his interpretation of Tolkien's epic tale.

It was the late 1970's that Paul embarked on his journey with Tolkien. His first canvas 10' x 6', is titled Ride of the Rohirrim, which was followed by Carahdras, then The Fall of Boromir (collection Kate Bush). At this time, Paul made the acquaintance of Peter Nahum, who at the time ran the painting department at Sotheby's Belgravia. On seeing Paul's work, he offered to organise a touring exhibition throughout Sotheby's offices in Britain, culminating at the Edinburgh Festival. This proved to be extremely popular and in 1984, as a direct consequence of the Edinburgh Festival, Paul was invited to exhibit his work at the Barbican in London. Peter Nahum left Sotheby's to set up his own gallery that year and, subsequently became his patron.