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.
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
Thomas Cameron, July 2024
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
Kate Holmes, June 2024
Stonemason Kate Holmes worked for 10 years in architectural restoration and is now studying historic carving and clay modelling at the City & Guilds of London Art School. Her course is encouraging her to discover her creative side. She makes full use of the fitness she gained representing Britain in judo and as a semi-professional footballer: she has abseiled down historic facades to identify faults in need of repair. Engraving lettering for headstones and figurative drawing are among her other skills.
www.khstonework.co.uk @khstonework
Bunmi Agusto, May 2024
Exquisitely painted ropes of braided hair thread their way through Bunmi Agusto’s surreal art. Tracking across her drawings, paintings, collages and prints, they link the many twists and turns of this young artist’s eventful life. To communicate her vision, Lagos-born Agusto employs the intense colours that she recalls before her move to Britain. Imaginary creatures that she describes as “hybrids” populate dreamlike scenes, blending ancient beliefs from West African cultures with figures from contemporary life and the video games she plays. Her interests range from psychology to architecture but she describes herself, with a smile, as “a fantasy specialist”.
bunmiagusto.com @bunmiagusto
Rosie Crawley, April 2024
Everyday moments of magic with a modern twist are at the core of Rosie Crawley’s large, bold oil canvases. She paints women she admires against a collage backdrop depicting the small joys of life, as in Lilac Wine (left). Her recent work is inspired by a trip to Mexico – and Frida Kahlo’s art. “Kahlo’s paintings tell a story,” she says. “I want to bring joy to gallery walls with my surreal touches in contemporary portraiture.” www.rosiemcrawley.com @rosiemcrawley
Ellie Caeti, March 2024
Until five years ago Ellie Caeti painted purely for relaxation, posting her vibrant Guernsey landscapes on Instagram for family and friends. But then a magazine asked to feature a painting which sold immediately. A flow of commissions and a London-based show followed: she now works as an artist full-time. About her work she says: “My aim is to express joy.”
theartbuyer.co.uk @elliecaetiart
Max White, February 2024
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
Xanthe Burdett – January 2024
The natural world is woven into ethereal woodland figures that populate Xanthe Burdett’s art. Tendrils and curling leaves clothe her sitters’ bodies, creating a surreal air of both entrapment and repose. While now London-based she often paints al fresco in the rural Devon of her childhood. “I enjoy using my imagination,” she explains “but I aim for the solidity of shapes that emerge when you observe as you work”.
xantheburdett.com @xantheburdett_artist
Melissa Perold, December 2023
Finance professional and entrepreneur Melissa Perold was casually surfing the web one day when she signed up “on a whim” for a three-day drawing course. One sketch led to another and eventually she swapped the City for diploma studies at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art. Perold now creates powerful portraits that have won her many commissions and awards. Judges have cited her intensity of observation, paint handling and emotional connection. Of her new career she says: “What I do now is entirely me. It’s who I am.”
@melissaperoldart
Eloise Dethier-Eaton, November 2023
Working in watercolour on paper, Eloise Dethier-Eaton is a multi-disciplinary artist drawn to still life, telling the stories behind the objects she depicts. She used decorative techniques for her recently completed MA at the City & Guilds of London Art School to focus on the poor ethics behind fast fashion, illustrated in her thought-provoking trompe l’oeil painting of a jumpsuit that ripped when first worn. She has been exploring the properties of paper and will apply skills from a paper-marbling apprenticeship for a fellowship she was recently awarded by the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers.
eloisedethiereaton.com
Emma Jamison, October 2023
Wedded to the outdoors from an early age, Emma Jamison expresses her love of the Sussex landscape in her abstract oils on canvas. From the studio on her family’s farm she composes vivid landscapes that evoke the ancient magic of the Downs. Her first solo show, staged in London by Petworth’s Kevis House Gallery, combined to spectacular effect these works with contrasting paintings inspired by a recent trip to Iceland.
Kimi Zoet, September 2023
Kimi Zoet embraces visual expression in its widest definition—not as simply painting and sculpture, but also as enfolding music, writing and other creative forms. Her current themes explore the natural world, water and the night sky. Increasingly, she is focusing on salvage sculpture based on discarded furniture. Weaving many strands together, she sums up her work by saying: “I’m a storyteller”.
kimizoetart.com
Ruby Hagan, August 2023
Winner of The Circles of Art prize for an artist under the age of 26 at the 2023 Society of Women Artists exhibition, Ruby Hagan exudes passion, originality and talent. (Her prize-winning work, The Council of Abi, is shown on our home page.) Aged 18, she has loved expanding her artistic horizons, doing life drawing, and exploring the grotesque for her Art A Level before heading from The Wirral to London to start her degree course.
www.rubyhagan.art
Previous winners – Artist of the Year
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.