Clare Law
Clare Law is an artist passionate about the landscape around her. She works from her studio in the heart of the beautiful Tamar Valley in Cornwall. Having been inspired by the richness of Impressionism throughout her life, her sculptural creative process involves a method of working using oils with only a small painting knife.
Clare Law
Clare Law is an artist passionate about the landscape around her. She works from her studio in the heart of the beautiful Tamar Valley in Cornwall. Having been inspired by the richness of Impressionism throughout her life, her sculptural creative process involves a method of working using oils with only a small painting knife.
Clare Law
Clare Law is an artist passionate about the landscape around her. She works from her studio in the heart of the beautiful Tamar Valley in Cornwall. Having been inspired by the richness of Impressionism throughout her life, her sculptural creative process involves a method of working using oils with only a small painting knife.
Clare Law
Clare Law is an artist passionate about the landscape around her. She works from her studio in the heart of the beautiful Tamar Valley in Cornwall. Having been inspired by the richness of Impressionism throughout her life, her sculptural creative process involves a method of working using oils with only a small painting knife.
Royal Arts Prize 2021
1st July - 14th July 2021
At La Galleria Pall Mall
Opening times:
Monday - Friday10:30am - 6:00pm
Saturday - 12:00pm - 4:00pm
Sunday - Closed
You can find all our shortlisted artists and their works in the online catalog, which you can download here.
2021 Shortlisted Artists
Elise Mendelle
Elise Mendelle has created her highly relevant Social Distancing series to capture our new normal when 2 metres apart is the only way we can interact. The pieces explore the feelings of separation and isolation we are experiencing in our current times. The images work very powerfully as a contemporary commentary, with a reductive style that recognises the distance and alienation we all feel right now. They are a mark of history and a keepsake of this period in time that has changed our world.
Chan Suk On
My artwork is“Art Manual”, I used an expired camera manual to create a new life. Does art need to be explained? I picked up the sundries in the room. Time passed, the thick camera manual was outdated, and the camera model was constantly updated. People always chase the updated model. Everything can be changed. I tried to fold different sculptural forms. The texts were about photography randomly distributed. It is a poetic process.
Ann Palmer
Ann Palmer paints seascapes in oil on hand prepared canvas, using a brush and palette knife, in her studio in Rochester, Kent, from her Plein air paintings from the beach in Whitstable, Kent, her sketches and photographs. She is inspired by seashores in Kent and Cornwall, standing on the pebbly beach watching the tide ebb and flow, the morning mist across the Swale, the light on the horizon, the clouds coming in from the west over London, and the light out to sea to the north and east. The low tide exposes sandbanks, pebbles, seafood for the gulls to seek.
Ellie Bird
Ellie Bird is a self-taught artist living in north London. Having recently left her primary school teaching career of twenty years, where teaching art was her favourite aspect, Ellie is now pursuing her painting passion full time and loving every minute! Currently working with acrylics, Ellie draws her inspiration from nature and the world around her. She is particularly interested in capturing the essence of water and the mesmerising reflections and refractions of light, colour and shape which are created by it. Water can be a form of escapism from the real world which, along with the swimmer, the observer can become immersed in. Although there is a photorealistic element to some of her paintings, the reflections of colour create a natural abstraction. In some of her most recent work, she also uses the technique of acrylic pouring, where the natural fluidity of the paint mimics those qualities in the water.
Cari Bateman
Cari is a London based artist who creates work from a passion within and has an overwhelming desire to share her creations with the world. She has sketched & painted since a child and whilst largely self-taught it was following a foundation course at St Martin's in 2009 that Cari acknowledged that producing paintings was her life calling. Cari’s early works were predominantly figurative and having experimented with various mediums and styles, much of her current work may be described as in the style of ‘contemporary impressionism’ with collections of Seascapes, Landscapes and Cityscapes using oil paint as her favoured medium.
The B O T A N I C A collection was born from Spring 2020’s lockdown which started a 7-month process where Cari had a deep yearning to paint flowers and botanical pieces. The collection was further inspired by a sense of joy, wonder and optimism following a long, hot Summer day at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Richmond. Each piece is a mix of brush and palette knife work which creates a rich and very physical texture. Cari says, “I became so immersed in looking at the flowers on my daily walks it was those moments that were captured in the painting process.”
Antonia Glynne Jones
Antonia was born and raised in Africa and has a passionate affinity with untamed vistas whether desert or sea. She defines spaces through colour. Drawing on her emotional and physical reaction to particular times, places and events, she combines observation and personal feelings to create artworks that are filled with directness, immediacy and vibrant energy. “For me, drawing and painting is about the interaction between the discipline of observation and the spontaneity of mark-making in terms of my physical and emotional response to the subject”.
Deeya Mirchandani
Deeya’s work endures a series of transformations of intent and flow. She is captivated by the conversation between colours and the new language which emerges from the resulting animation of paint. Her exploration stems from her interest in the movement of natural phenomena and the stillness of a moment.
Nikhil Kirsh
Nikhil Kirsh is a British artist who emerged in 2011 in Reykjavik, Iceland with his first solo show entitled, “TRANSGRESS, ramma fyrir ramma”. Since then, he has exhibited his subtle yet provocatively honest works through many subsequent collections. He is also known in Reykjavik for his affinity with Icelandic artists, resulting in sculptural and theatrical collaborations. More recently, since his return to the UK, he has been exploring dimensions of consciousness, from existential ‘separateness’ to deeper and more intimate expressions of unity consciousness.
This journey has marked a significant shift towards a deeper mysticism in his work. Kirsh is currently experimenting with combinations of geometric form to generate specifically intended vibrational experiences for the viewer. In alchemical terms, they function much like machines that hold in their opening forms, transformative energies. For his most recent painting, 'Path Of Freedom', he worked intuitively with three concepts: Freedom, Connection and Bliss, combined as separate portals to complete a very particular journey within.
Akshita Lad
As the saying goes - Eyes are the windows to the soul. I’ve made the eyes the focal point of my portraits as I wanted to capture my subjects in an act of reflection and thought. I wanted to juxtapose the passiveness of their postures with the speed of thoughts flying through their minds.
My style reflects a delicacy, timelessness, and attention to detail that are influenced by my love of the great Masters of the Renaissance period. I was born in Mumbai, India. I was very fortunate to grow-up in a family where my father, a collector of classical European, Japanese and Chinese art, instilled in me an appreciation for the arts - for workmanship and for beauty.
Currently, I am immersed in painting portraits. My aim is to bring alive the beauty and character of my subjects. I want my audience to be delighted with my art and I want to create art that is timeless.
I love travelling and have lived in many parts of the world. I currently live and work in Dubai, U.A.E.
Vanessa Hocking-Creek
Vanessa Hocking-Creek is a contemporary British painter. She was born in London and grew up in Surrey. She studied art at Epsom School of Art and Design and focuses predominantly on portraiture. She is married and has two children whom she features in several of her works. Most recently including them in her chronicles of the pandemic.
Each painting is an extension of her emotion in that time and dictates which direction she will follow. Although Vanessa has a subject in mind and a basic idea of what she wants to portray, no painting is planned exactly until she starts painting. Each painting evolved as it is created and as her ideas transpire. She loves painting in acrylic as well as oils, using strong, bold strokes that reflect her passion for her work.
Victoria General
Toronto based artist who primarily works either with pastel, charcoal or oil. Specializing in figurative narrative art, Victoria renders scenes which often depict the more intimate, private moments of our lives. (You can also find her exploring different eras from the past.) Her work has been exhibited extensively internationally and is in private collections globally. You can find Victoria’s work on Instagram at @victoria.general or at www.saatchiart.com/victoriageneral.
Carla Thompson
London-based contemporary fine-art realist painter Carla Thompson has an impressive background in fashion and design. One of the major influences in her work as an artist, it is her background and her own study of elaborately constructed still-lives from her private collection that often determines her choice of imagery. Carla’s exciting vision is a modern, fresh approach to portraiture derived from stylish, fashion-forward subjects that she blends using a contemporary feel combined with the old masters’ techniques.
Šárka Darton
‘Heart Matters’ 2021 is a new body of work created at the beginning of this year. It reflects our current state of existence with all our excites relating to recent events, from global pandemic to global warming. Using the images of human anatomy; heart and hands in combination with gold leave, I aim to bring the viewers attention to both the beauty and fragility of human existence. Emphasis is being put on connectivity, love and appreciation.
James Reid
40 000 is a seminal body of work using in camera single image overlay methods with a fixed view point of a major construction project. The overall technique creates movement and energy to produce tension and inaccuracy. This dynamic offers the viewer the opportunity to seek out the reverberation, noise of the image. The warping of detail and colour invokes an abstract look and feel, enhancing the aesthetic beauty and scale of the image.
Fleur Cowgill
Fleur Cowgill is a painter. Now living in West Sussex, Cowgill was raised in the tropics which has left a lasting impact on her colour palette. Her painterly style is concerned with capturing light and the essence of natural forms, often underpinned by a loose grid drawn in mixed mediums.
She attended several art schools, gaining a BA Fine Art in London, at the same time visiting galleries and museums to study and enjoy art from the Renaissance to the late 20th century. Regular city breaks have also enabled her to tour major galleries in Europe and the USA. Elements of these artworks influenced her own experiments with mark making as she evolved a loose, expressionist, style of her own. In 2018, Cowgill achieved an MA Fine Art Research at Brighton University, which has led to exciting developments in her work reflecting a deeper appreciation of processes within her art practice.
She was Laing Landscape/Seascape National Prize winner in 1990, her work has been exhibited across London and the UK, and she has also exhibited and sold work in New York.