Hesketh Hubbard Bursaries 2025 | Winners Announced
/ Hesketh Hubbard Art Society
Announcement of the winners of the Hesketh Hubbard Bursaries 2025...
Hesketh Hubbard Bursaries | Winners
To address a shortage of life drawing opportunities available to young artists, London's largest life drawing group, the Hesketh Hubbard Art Society, annually award bursaries to artists aged between 18 and 30.
Each winner receives a free year-long membership to the Society starting in January 2025.
This year there was a record-breaking number of submissions and the standard was particularly high. Thank you to all the artists that took the time to apply.
We are delighted to announce this year's winners:
Chloe Barnes
I've had to rely on photographic references, which I feel have limited my ability to capture the human form with the same expressive mark-making... I've come to realise that I need to work predominantly from life to fully embrace the spontaneity, intuition, and raw emotion that observational drawing brings to my work
Chloe is known for her expressive, figurative monotypes that explore themes of identity, emotion, and the experiences of women, including her own. Through distorted forms, her work invites viewers to imagine themselves as the subject of each scene, empowering them to see themselves in new ways.
Paul Majek
Paul Majek is an artist based in London finishing The Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School. His work delves into landscapes of memory, generational dialogues, and spirituality. He uses many mediums, including oil, acrylic and charcoal, to create deeply layered surfaces often exploring personal narratives within domestic spaces.
I am especially excited about the chance to draw from life amongst other passionate artists who are as deeply invested in drawing as myself
Zoë Wilkinson
Zoë is an emerging artist of British and Guyanese origin. Her work is predominantly concerned with the concept of 'homeland'. She draws from the visual language of Caribbean Gothic to create critical paintings and sketches that are infused with commentary on colonialism, racism, and patriarchy. When working in acrylic and oil, she often uses saturated colour palettes to depict dream-like scenes that oscillate between haziness and clarity.
Working solely from photographs has meant that I only have a partial understanding of the human form. Therefore, the opportunity to gain a comprehensive understanding of the human figure through life drawing would mean that I could learn to depict scenes that I can only access through memory
Shortlist for the Hesketh Hubbard Bursaries 2025
Verity Ure-Jones
Specialising in contemporary portraiture, Verity's work delves into the intricacies of womanhood. View her work exhibited in the ROI Annual Exhibition 2024.
Ewan White
Ewan is an award-winning painter from London who has studied at the Royal Drawing School and the Slade School of Fine Art. He has previous exhibited at the Mall Galleries during the NEAC Annual Exhibition 2020.
Jenna Waldren
Recently appearing on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, Jenna's practice is deeply rooted in the act of looking. She documents glimmers of the everyday that celebrate the beauty of human connection.