Paul Huxley studied at Harrow School of Art from 1951 to 1956, and subsequently at the Royal Academy Schools from 1956 to 1960. He taught at the Royal College of Art from 1976, becoming Professor of Painting there from 1986 until 1998, when he was appointed Professor Emeritus.

Huxley’s first solo exhibition was held in 1963 at the Rowan Gallery, London, where he continued to exhibit regularly during the following two decades. Huxley participated in many group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, from 1959 when he exhibited in Young Contemporaries, London. In 1964 he participated in The New Generation exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, alongside Caulfield, Hockney, Hoyland and Riley. More recent group exhibitions include shows at the Barbican (1993), the Gulbenkian Centre for Modern Art, Lisbon (1997), and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and Leicester City Art Gallery (1999).

In 1964 Huxley won first prize in the Stuyvesant Travel Awards which took him to America. He was a prize winner at the Paris Biennale (1965) and in the same year was awarded a Harkness Fellowship with which he returned to the States, living in New York for a two year residency. He won the Linbury Trust Award (1977), first prize in the Eastern Arts Exhibition (1983) and a National Art Collections award for Outstanding Service to the Arts (1995). Among his commissions are 22 ceramic mural designs for Kings Cross Station (1984), sets and costumes for the Rambert Dance Company (1991) and a wall drawing for the entrance and stairway of Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2001).

Huxley was a member of the advisory panels for the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Serpentine Gallery. He was a Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1975 to 1982, acting for a period as chairman of its Exhibitions Committee. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1987 and was Treasurer of the Royal Academy from 2000 – 2014.