Every month The Circles of Art newsletter features an artist who has captured our attention. Members vote for our annual award recognising the artist whose work they find most outstanding.
Rachel Mercer, December 2024
Capturing the energy of human interaction and the importance of the observed world is at the core of Rachel Mercer’s drawings and paintings. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Drawing School and has had residencies in Scotland, Tuscany and China. Exhibitions of her work have focused on subjects such as the bustle of the old Stratford shopping centre in east London.
rachelmercerartist.com @rachelmercerartist
Mils Bridgewater, November 2024
Mils Bridgewater describes herself as “essentially a storyteller” who creates installations focused on nature, animal husbandry and ecology. She works with varied media, including wood, bronze and fur, but glass is her driving force, a material she finds “vulnerable and duplicitous, magical and amorphous”. A recent graduate of London’s City & Guilds School, she furthers her knowledge by working part-time as a glass technician.
milsbridgewater.com @mils_bridgewater
Charlotte Durie, October 2024
Growing up in Chelsea in an artistic milieu, Charlotte Durie was naturally drawn to painting. She expresses her love of both the metropolis and nature in her atmospheric paintings in pastel and oil. Her love of film noir informs her cityscapes, while annual stays in a family cabin on Lake Superior inspire her to paint the towering forests of Minnesota. Based in Wales since her early twenties, she exhibits both in London and locally.
www.charlottedurie.art @duriecharlotte
Flo Long, September 2024
A pencil, a sheet of paper and a make-up brush. These were all that Flo Long employed to be named runner-up in the Society of Women Artists’ 2024 award for under-25s. Her work was commended as “beautifully executed”, with a special ability to capture the effects of light.
@flosfineart
Jemima Spence, August 2024
Jemima Spence paints portraits in oil from life. In 2024 she was awarded The Circles of Art prize for young artists by the Society of Women Artists and her work was recently displayed by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In summer she loves to work outdoors on a very different scale, creating surreal murals for her local community in Yorkshire.
jemimaspence.com @jemimaspence.art
Previous winners – Artist of the Year
Max White, February 2024
Artist of the Year 2023/24
Max White evokes mood and atmosphere in his urban and marine oil paintings. From plein air sketches he paints using only two or three strong colours, investing emotion in each scene. He is drawn to the abstract, possibly influenced by his studies in architecture. His membership of the prestigious Wapping Group of Artists (pictured is The Thames by Wapping) and representation in several galleries, notably Green & Stone in a solo exhibition in May 2024, mark him out, aged 25, as a talent to watch.
www.maxwhiteartist.co.uk @maxwhiteartist
Thomas Cameron, July 2024
Artist of the Year runner-up 2023/24
When Thomas Cameron’s oil painting of a food deliverer went on show the UK’s Government Art Collection acquired it on the spot. Like so many of the artist’s works, it captures a moment that speaks volumes about urban life in Britain today. His work is often suggestive of movie stills so it’s no surprise that his current ambition is to further exploit the psychological possibilities of film and its lighting effects. He says: “Every day I find there’s a new way to approach the same subject and achieve a different result.”
thomascameronart.co.uk @thomascameronart
Daisy Denning, October 2022 – Portrait artist
Artist of the Year 2022/23
Having shown an early interest in portrait painting, Daisy Denning cemented her skill at the Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, which keeps traditional oil portraiture alive. Painting from life in controlled natural light in studios in London and Kent, she is inspired by such artists as Velasquez, Renaissance and 18th-century British masters and Sargent, wishing ‘to create a world within the canvas’. That she has exhibited at the Society of Women Artists and the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers and returns to Florence every year as a tutor reflects her exceptional talent. daisydenning.com
Wesley George, November 2022 – Artist
Artist of the Year runner-up 2022/23
Wesley George’s portraits pop with dazzling colour – but that’s just one of the qualities that sear his work into your mind. This self-taught artist of Vincentian-English heritage has a mission to convey the character and experience of Londoners with similar African diaspora backgrounds to his own. Dynamic urban youth culture fires his work. His mission is “to focus on the complexity of Black British identity – to dismantle traditional racial narratives and bring out every person’s individuality and emotional scope.” wesleyggeorge.com
Joseph Black, August 2021 – Artist
Artist of The Year 2021/2022
Joseph says of his precision-honed paintings: “the relationship between people and nature, and in particular between animals and their depictions in art, has always been the main focus of my work”. The musculature of horses and myriad colours of trees fuel his passion “to explore the finest details and bring them to life”. This Kent-based Courtauld Institute graduate recently had a solo show at the Jonathan Cooper Gallery, where his equine works were centre stage.
https://www.josephblackart.com
Nicola Stratton Tyler, May 2022 – Artist
Artist of The Year runner up 2021/2022
When Nicola Stratton Tyler takes her oil paints and heads for the coast, her mission is to capture not just the extraordinary landscape but also the sounds of the sea. The thunder of breakers pounding on Cornish cliffs or wind whispering through Suffolk reed beds is as integral to her work as the dramatic interplay of scenery, sea and sky. “I aim to give an immediate sense of being outside, of natural forms, the play of light, the rumble of the waves” she says. Her paintings convey pure delight in the contrasting countryside around her low-lying East Anglian home, with its vast skies, and the rugged West Country, where she regularly holidays.
nicolastrattontyler.co.uk
Tim Gilpin, April 2021 – Painter
Artist of The Year 2020/2021
Tim Gilpin’s paintings not only capture the eye but envelop you within the lush surroundings of their canvas. He chooses the slow-drying intense medium of an oil palette to bind together the brilliant colours he loves. Working initially from a photograph of a room or hotel interior, Gilpin draws a composition of lines and shapes that he then manipulates and scales onto large, square-format canvases.
tgart.artweb.com
Emily Wilson , August 2020 – Painter
Artist of The Year runner up 2020/2021
Portrait artist Emily Wilson captures the elusive essence of childhood with her iridescent watercolour paintings. The arrival of her first-born son rekindled her artistic creativity and she has progressed from depicting him to taking photo-to-portrait commissions. Her passion for painting and drawing, conveying a child’s pure joy for life, appears in every piece.