2025 | Shifting Focus: Female Painters & Sculptors 2025

Informed by her mixed Japanese-British heritage, Yuki’s (b. 1985) work explores themes of loss, longing, and identity. Drawing from nature and 16th-18th century still life traditions, her paintings merge Old Master techniques with contemporary digital collages. Her compositions often feature suspended subjects in dark, expansive spaces, evoking the void and numinous. Blending Western materials with Eastern philosophy and Japanese aesthetics, her works exist between abstraction and figuration, presence and absence, reflecting her bicultural identity. Yuki studied Fine Art at Wimbledon and Camberwell, graduating in 2008. Alongside her studies, she trained as a taxidermist and florist, skills that inform her practice. She completed an MA at City & Guilds in 2021, receiving The Painter-Stainers Decorative Arts Fellowship. Based between Suffolk-Norfolk and Wimbledon, Yuki has exhibited across Europe and East Asia. She is an Honorary Freeman and curator at The Worshipful Company of Painters & Stainers.

Madeleine Gross, (b. 1993, Los Angeles) an American artist based in Miami, blends photography and painting to create dreamlike and evocative works of art. Gross captures idyllic scenes from around the world and then imbues them with a vibrant, painterly touch. Her work often features intimate portraits of couples embracing in a moment of passion. These figures are overlaid onto photographs of breathtaking landscapes - beaches, lakes, snow-covered mountains - creating a tension between the idealised and the raw. Gross's bold, expressive brushstrokes add a layer of emotional intensity to these scenes, transforming them into personal and nostalgic narratives. By combining the precision of photography with the spontaneity of painting, Gross creates a visual language that is both realistic and surreal, inviting viewers to consider the blurred lines between reality and fantasy. With a growing international following and features in renowned publications such as i-D, The Coveteur, and Interview Magazine, Gross is establishing herself as an established articulator of the power of human connection.

Heather Horton (b. 1974, Burlington, USA) is a Canadian artist renowned for her evocative and ethereal oil paintings. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from McMaster University and a diploma in interpretive illustration from Sheridan College, Horton began to explore the nuanced world of underwater imagery. Her paintings depict solitary female figures immersed in serene bodies of water, their forms softened and distorted by the refracted light. Horton skillfully captures the interplay of light and shadow with a sensuous appeal, creating a sense of both tranquillity and mystery. In the words of Horton, “internal states, the contemplation of self and existence, and letting space around the subject encompass and inform its reality are the running themes and approaches to my work." Horton's unique blend of realism and abstraction has garnered critical acclaim, and her works have been exhibited internationally and are included in prestigious public and private collections, including the Government of Ontario and the Canadian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. She has also been featured in the film "A Simple Favor" and has been profiled by Bravo! Canada.

The paintings of Park Jieun are born from a combined fascination with travel and traditional Korean methods of painting. Revealing hidden cityscapes through windows of broad, expressive brushstrokes, she evokes the subconscious emotions that are inspired by interactions with places. In these spaces, one can experience solitude or joy, can be drawn in by obsessions and linger as a guest in other cultures. The artist explores these urban landscapes, exposing them as fleeting glimpses seen through the potent lens of the brushstroke.

Using wood as her chosen medium, Cha Jongrye constructs seamlessly intricate wooden landscapes by sanding and layering hundreds of delicate wooden boards. Her process is intentionally unintentional; rather than executing a predetermined design, she allows herself to discover images in the fluidity of arranging and rearranging the uniquely hand-shaped blocks.

Reisha Perlmutter is a figurative artist who paints detailed and intimate images of the female human body. She deploys mastery of technique to create an almost hyper-real sense of physical presence. Her models bask in aquatic, tranquil settings that propose an integrated, benevolent and harmonious relationship with nature. Perlmutter’s naked subjects float, swim and immerse themselves in water. Submerged or not, they appear perfectly at ease in the medium, which supports and nurtures them. We see them part-revealed, part-distorted by the modifying, liquid lens of the sea. The artist is adept at manipulating paint to express the play of light, the subtle gradations of colour and the complex modulations of contour that are fundamental to making such convincing images. Recent paintings focus closely on the head. They are particularly concerned with the flow of hair in water, as it swirls, drifts and curls, masking and obscuring the features to evoke an air of mystery. Such pictures make allusive reference to art historical precedents – the Nereids, Sirens and mermaids of classical and folk tales, so beloved by a multitude of storytelling painters, sculptors and illustrators. Perlmutter’s characters adopt some of the more ambiguous aspects of these, suggesting the chance for a less well-disposed expression of feminine spirit. The artist locates her women in what can be interpreted as an implicitly ‘female’ environment. Her figures are often in semi-foetal poses, which suggests a vital, amniotic medium, essential to bringing forth and sustaining life. She chooses to represent the sea as benign, soothing and calming – a space for relaxation, contemplation and solitary thoughtfulness. For this artist the forces of nature are potentially friendly, but as a caveat, need to be worked with and not against. Her models are revealed nude and unadorned, in step and balance with an elemental, watery world.