Shortlisted for the Women in Art Prize 2025 – The Space Between Us Hashtag 05
I’m absolutely blown away to share that my painting The Space Between Us Hashtag 05 has been shortlisted for the Women in Art Prize 2025, in the Paula Rego Painting Prize category.
This is an honour that means more to me than I can fully put into words. To be recognised by a platform that celebrates women artists on an international level is extraordinary in itself - but to be acknowledged within a category bearing Paula Rego’s name feels profoundly personal.
I fell in love with Paula Rego’s work as a teenager. Her dancers - poised yet raw, powerful yet vulnerable - left a deep impression on me. Her ability to communicate the complexities of emotion, power, and story through figurative painting shaped so much of how I see my own work today. Her influence lives in every brushstroke where I try to express intimacy, presence, and feeling. To be shortlisted for an award supported by the Paula Rego Estate is something I could never have imagined.
About the Painting: The Space Between Us Hashtag 05
This painting is part of my ongoing series The Space Between Us, a body of work exploring closeness, longing, and emotional connection. Each piece in the series seeks to capture the unspoken tensions and tenderness that can exist between two people - the weight of a look, the stillness of a moment, the charged space between bodies.
In Hashtag 05, the connection is palpable but not explicit. The intimacy is quiet, suspended, like breath held in a shared silence. It's a painting about presence - being truly seen and seeing someone else - and about the vulnerability that comes with that openness.
Painting this series has been a personal journey of reconnection. After a period of grief and stillness, returning to the canvas was like returning to myself. This particular piece emerged in a moment of flow, when the outside world dropped away and all that existed was the feeling I was trying to honour.
What This Shortlisting Means
To have this piece selected for the shortlist is both validating and deeply emotional. It tells me that the honesty and tenderness I try to express through portraiture resonates - that people see something of themselves in the work. And in a world that often prizes spectacle or perfection, that means everything.
Being shortlisted for the Paula Rego Painting Prize feels especially significant because her legacy has always centred on truth - emotional, political, feminine truth. I can’t imagine a greater compliment than to be included, even peripherally, in that lineage.
Thank you to the Women in Art Prize and the Paula Rego Estate for seeing this work. And thank you to everyone who has supported me, stood beside me, and reminded me why painting matters.
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The Women in Art Prize 2025 exhibition and final judging will follow later this year. I’ll share updates as they come, including where and when the shortlisted works will be on display.
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