When Paula Rae Gibson's husband died of cancer, her entire universe crumbled away. Robbed of her lifelong partner she began to question her place in the world and relationships with those around her. Unable to endure the suffering of love a second time, but wishing to satisfy her physical needs, she embarked on a series of volatile sexual encounters with all the wrong men. All the while she asked, ‘what is love?' and ‘exactly how long is forever?'

These questioning soliloquies and emotional explorations formed the nucleus of her first book, Diary of a Love Addict (nominated for the German photography book prize, the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2007), following the painful journey from lover and mother to widow. Self-styled erotic images were accompanied by disarmingly honest and intimate confessions. All photographs were produced in the darkroom and chemically damaged in a process, which Paula describes as “battering something to make it more beautiful… it's what life does to us.”

It gave a heart-breaking insight into her emotional state following the death of her husband and revealed the emotional intensity of their life together and the child they brought up. Paula went on to make a film, What Are You Doing Forever?, selected for the International Festival of Cinema and Technology and screened as part of the Portobello film festival.

Emerging phoenix-like from the ashes of her grief, Paula has channelled all her energies into creative output. Her debut album ‘No More Tiptoes' released this September is set to earn the 38-year-old singer/songwriter and multi-talented artist an even greater pool of admirers. A pared down acoustic set, Paula is accompanied by Tom Pilling on piano. Her seductive and unnerving vocal style has been described as a mix of Kate Bush and Tori Amos.

'If I did gain anything, it was a new freedom, a freedom not to worry, just to get on with life. If you can watch a man you love with every cell in your body die over 900 days, you get a feeling that you can do anything,' she says

At the age of 17 Paula moved from Tunbridge Wells to Tokyo to pursue a career in modelling. At 18 she married an Ecuadorian and nine years later she was divorced. At 21 she was involved in a near fatal car accident, which entirely altered her outlook on life. “It put me in the darkroom, made me learn the piano – I just celebrated being alive in every way. I changed so much I had to leave the relationship I was in.”

She then went on to marry film director Brian Gibson, famous for his Oscar winning film What's Love Got To Do With It. In 2001 she gave birth to their daughter and then in 2004 Brian passed lost his two-year battle against cancer.

“I see love so differently now. I've seen where desire comes from… by examining the wounds it leaves behind. Even with a great love experience, when your beloved dies, it's as if their hands, which have dressed your old wounds, are taken away. So these wounds are reopened. I'm scared of love now, because when the one you love dies, you want to die.

‘I'll Always Walk Away' was published in October and nominated for a German Photo Book Award. Mixing music, video art and photography it documents Paula's emotional journey of the last three years. A documentary by Susanna Leyton on Paula and her music is also currently under way. Next recording project Maybe Too Nude is now available (released on Babel) featuring the talents of Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) and Martyn Barker (Billy Bragg). She has started work with Richard Bolton and Kit Downes.

An exhibition of her work will take place at Rollo Gallery from 17 April.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY…

“A trenchantly individual piece of work, No More Tiptoes is the debut CD from London-born singer, poet, photographer and filmmaker Paula Rae Gibson. Stripped down to just keyboard and voice, music-making doesn't get much more personal than this. Some of the songs almost give the impression of being improvised – ‘Busy Fairies' being a prime example – while others such as ‘I'll Always Walk Away' have a more clearly defined harmonic motion.

Pianist Tom Pilling creates a variety of atmospheric soundscapes, from rippling right-hand figurations and booming bass octaves to the merest chordal fragments, against which the singer delivers her painful and questioning soliloquies in a voice that at times is so gossamer-light it threatens to evaporate into the ether. A disc that's simultaneously disconcerting and moving." Peter Quinn, Jazzwise

"With a crystalline voice that switches between low confessional tones to fragile, gossamer-light highs, Gibson's acerbic wit constantly questions her (and the listener's) desires, feelings and self-image." (Time Out) Full article here

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this is just a start..........new photos, the lyrics, and more here soon..........