Future Masters &
Rising Artists
Join us in celebrating diversity and supporting emerging artists on their journey to greatness. Discover the future of art with the Michael Harding Future Masters programme, showcasing exceptional young talents and artists from underrepresented backgrounds.
Danil Becker
Danil Becker is a Bonn-based painter who holds a Bachelor's, Master's, and the title of Meisterschüler from Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, in the class of Andreas Orosz. His practice engages with pre-existing images - primarily works by other artists - not as subjects to copy, but as material for analysis, transformation, and reinterpretation. Working in the tension between control and anarchy, citation and destruction, his paintings have been shown internationally, including at Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (DIE GROSSE) and Galerie SPACE / 宇宙 in Denmark. He is a recipient of the EVBK Young Award and the Sparkasse Art Prize, both first prizes.
Jodi Biggs
London-born artist Jodi's practice draws on the city's archetypes, spaces, and the poetry of the everyday. Working in oil paint and rusted steel, Jodi blends gestural mark-making, muted palettes, and archival photography to explore archetypal figures, memory, and myth. From large-scale florals to welded metal bouquets and intimate figurative works, the art merges personal narratives with cultural fragments, creating timeless worlds between figuration and abstraction.
Kacper Ogaza
Kacper Ogaza is a Polish plein air oil painter who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, completing postgraduate studies with distinction in 2024. Influenced by the French Impressionists, his practice centres on capturing the fleeting effects of natural light and landscape atmosphere directly on location - every painting begun and completed under the same light and conditions. He documents his process extensively through photography and video, and is currently developing a project in Normandy commemorating the centenary of Claude Monet's death.
Nina Rumińska
Nina Rumińska is a Polish-born painter based in Slane, County Meath. Trained in classical realism at the Florence Academy of Classical Art and at Chiaroscuro under Sergey Chubirko, her work is rooted in academic discipline and careful observation. Originally holding a BA in Japanese Studies from UMK Toruń, she now focuses fully on painting and teaching. She has exhibited at the RHA in Dublin and the Royal Ulster Academy in Belfast, and was a finalist in Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year. In 2025, she founded Classical Art Studio in Slane.
Madeline Johnson
Madeline Johnson is a 17-year-old American artist whose practice combines oil portraiture with bold 3D mixed media elements - sourced from barns, garages, and thrift stores - to convey complex emotions that resist words alone. Her work explores relationship struggles, the obsession with success, and womanhood, and has been exhibited across seven gallery locations with commissions and sales spanning the US and internationally. With two solo shows planned for 2026 and a rapidly growing audience of over 9k on Instagram, Madeline is one of the most exciting emerging voices in contemporary oil and mixed media painting.
Caro Lestón
Caro Lestón is a Galician-Colombian artist based in South London. A graduate of Chelsea College of Arts (First Class Honours) and the Royal College of Art MA Contemporary Art Practice - supported by the Leverhulme Arts Scholarship - she is currently preparing to begin an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. Her oil painting practice explores the feminine, the divine, and the politics of bodies in public and private spaces, drawing on Galician folklore and scholars including Gloria Anzaldúa and Isabel Allende. Her work has been shown in multiple solo and group exhibitions across London, and published in Force Majeure and Suboart Magazine.
Raquel Pantin
Raquel Pantin is a self-taught oil painter based in Florida, known for her bold use of color and her ability to blend surrealism and pop art into visually striking, thought-provoking works. Since beginning her painting journey in 2014, she has developed a style that invites viewers into imaginative worlds-spaces where reality bends and underrepresented voices take center stage.
Alice Pearson
Alice Pearson is a London-based oil painter specialising in portraiture and still life, painted exclusively from life. Trained for three years at the Florence Academy of Art and graduating in 2026, she was named a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust Emerging Maker in 2025. A background in fashion shapes a practice that brings Old Master technique into conversation with contemporary people and culture. She is developing a London exhibition collaborating with makers - milliners, jewellers and florists - and shares her process with a fast-growing TikTok audience.
Hardaylis Arrindel
Hardaylis Arrindel is a contemporary oil painter whose figurative portraiture explores identity, emotion, and personal growth through the lens of the Black experience. Their series Rooted examines vulnerability, reflection, and connection, using composition, colour, and surface to convey emotional presence rather than literal narrative. Having participated in two group exhibitions, Hardaylis continues to develop a deliberate, material-focused practice - guided by a belief that the physical act of painting is integral to how meaning is formed.
Magda Urse
Magda Urse is a Romanian painter and restorer based in Bucharest, and the only artist in the world known to paint with the recovered Voroneț Blue - an azurite pigment lost for over six centuries, original to the frescoes of Voroneț Monastery. Trained at the Nicolae Tonitza High School of Fine Arts and the National University of Arts Bucharest, she has spent over two decades restoring Romania's most significant sacred monuments. A member of the Union of Fine Artists of Romania, her work has been exhibited in Romania and Austria, including at the National Geological Museum, Bucharest, and Simeza Gallery. Working exclusively in oil, she believes that the physical truth of a pigment is inseparable from the spiritual and historical truth of the image it makes.
Alex Bird
Alex Bird is an emerging Fine Artist from Rotherham, South Yorkshire. She completed a BA in Fine & Applied Arts, developing a material-led painting practice shaped by observation and experimentation. Growing up and continuing to live in South Yorkshire informs her sensitivity to place, atmosphere & environment. In 2025, her work was selected for Gallery Town, a public art initiative in Rotherham town centre marking her first exhibition and reinforcing her focus on accessible, site-responsive practice.
Makenzy Beard
Makenzy Beard is a 16-year-old artist whose painting journey began during the lockdown with her mother's old paints. In just two years, she has gained international acclaim, selling her work globally and exhibiting at prestigious venues like the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show. Makenzy also held a sellout solo exhibition. Her vibrant and expressive oil and acrylic paintings have captivated audiences worldwide, showcasing her unique talent and passion for art.
Simon Ronnie
Simon Ronnie, from Castlethorpe near Milton Keynes, is a self-taught artist who developed his skills by copying Old Master drawings and working from life. In 2021, inspired by the birth of his daughter Florence, he taught himself to paint using similar techniques. His work is displayed at Woburn Art Gallery and Art Unlimited Gallery, where he was a finalist for the Art Unlimited International Artist 2024. His style uses chiaroscuro and a limited palette, often with subtle religious undertones.
Lewis Dimmick
Raised in Ashington, a former mining town in North East England, Lewis Dimmick is a plein air oil painter working directly from life-on streets, coasts, parks, and busy festival sites. His work focuses on people and movement, capturing scenes as they shift in real time. Influenced by a working-class tradition, he keeps his practice open and accessible, often painting in public, sharing progress, and running sessions for new and young artists.
Clayton Therrien
Clayton Therrien is an oil painter whose work focuses on light, mood, and the quiet presence of everyday subjects. Moving from a background in digital art, he has developed a disciplined studio practice built on careful tonal structure and the interplay of warm and cool colour. Clayton is drawn to visible brushwork and paint surface quality - seeking an honesty in the material that resists over-polish - and shares his evolving process and finished paintings across social media.
Alice Masters
Alice Masters is a London-based oil painter capturing the natural and unscripted moments of everyday life - from intimate portraits and glowing landscapes to her signature disco ball series. Trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, she moved to London where she developed a refined observational practice centred on light, colour, and the beauty found in quiet, overlooked moments. She has been using Michael Harding paints as the cornerstone of her palette since 2019.
Godofredo Astudillo
Godofredo Astudillo, a Filipino American artist, paints to preserve what's fading-memories of growing up in '80s-'90s Los Angeles, shaped by loss, recovery, and resilience after brain surgeries. Self-taught, he works in oil to honor Southeast Asian faces rarely seen in museums, layering fragments of scent, sound, and color into intimate, dreamlike portraits.
Myfi Bella
Myfi Bella (b. 2005, West Wales) is a figurative oil painter whose work centres on the human figure, painted from life and photographs. After a Foundation year at Carmarthen School of Art, she committed to painting full-time in 2025, building a practice rooted in Alla Prima technique. The MH Desert set and 137 Warm White (Lead White Alternative) have become staples of her softened skin palette. Inspired by Cassatt, Sargent and Schmid, she aims to fit an entire story into a single portrait, and is beginning to explore the myths and legends of Wales.
Hamish Fleming
Hamish Fleming is an Adelaide-based painter whose work blends traditional classical realism with contemporary subject matter. Influenced by both historical painters and modern realists like Hopper and Freud, his practice focuses on realism's blunt and unfiltered portrayal of life. Drawing inspiration from the workshop techniques of old masters, Fleming creates 75% of his paints from raw pigments and works solely from life, without digital aids or reference photos. His art invites viewers to appreciate the raw, inherent qualities of his subjects, presenting them as they are, not as they should be.
Lara Sayegh
Lara Sayegh is a British Iraqi artist based in London. Influenced by the Earth's textures and forms, her work explores memory, identity, and place. After training at Central Saint Martins, she developed a tactile visual language using natural materials like sand and marble dust. Her abstract paintings, often on aluminium or linen, echo shifting landscapes and natural phenomena, creating immersive, meditative spaces for reflection.
Isabel Couceiro
Isabel Couceiro da Costa Newman (b. 2002) is a Portuguese-American figurative oil painter based in Boston, MA. Her work, blending traditional and contemporary styles, explores themes of intimacy and connection. Currently pursuing a BFA at Boston University, she was the Overall Winner at the 2023 Visual Art Open UK & International Awards and has collaborated with Warner Music Group. Her paintings, exhibited internationally, invite viewers into deeply personal, emotive spaces.
Júlia Gibert Badia
Júlia Gibert Badia's work draws from romanticism and symbolism, exploring the hidden beauty within tenebrism and natural mysticism. Through painting, pastel, and photography, she examines the relationship between light and form, expressing her imagination through figuration. Born in Spain in 2000, Júlia explored graphic design, advertising, and audiovisual fields, but painting remains her true passion.
Hanna Kozeletska
Hanna Kozeletska is a Ukrainian painter from Kryvyi Rih, now based in Chișinău, Moldova. Working primarily in oil, she explores colour, light, and figurative form through portraiture, landscape, and historical themes. Trained in Kharkiv and Kyiv, she combines academic discipline with a contemporary sensibility. Her award-winning work, including "Kyiv's Source of Eternity," reflects a focus on composition, tone, and the evolving relationship between people and their environment.
Cornelia Maiwald
Cornelia Maiwald is an emerging artist creating vibrant oil and mixed media works that capture fleeting moods and moments. She blends traditional techniques with digital tools like AI to shape ideas and spark creativity. Often painting en plein air, she works quickly and expressively. With a background in media and studies under Adebanji Alade, she now teaches sketching and continues to explore her dynamic, intuitive approach to painting.
Julianne Guinee
Julianne Guinee is an Irish figurative oil painter whose work explores the cultural scripts still shaping women's lives. Through layered, emotive scenes of women and children, she reveals the tension between beauty and unease, autonomy and expectation. Domestic objects become symbols of hidden labour and quiet rebellion. Represented by galleries across Ireland, she paints full-time in County Cork.
Daria Kardaś
Daria Kardaś is a Polish MA painter and art educator based in Gdańsk, where she has spent five years teaching alongside developing her own practice. Her work explores "non-places" - transit spaces such as platforms and open fields - as a collective self-portrait of modern solitude. Quiet, existential compositions depict fragile figures facing the weight of the world, merging contemporary narratives of alienation with a deep attention to pigment quality and craft. An active competitor in art contests with notable achievements, Daria is also building an art store and educational project.
Liam McGee
Liam McGee is a painter working primarily in large-scale oil painting, with a practice centred on intense, high-chroma colour. Throughout his studies, he has increasingly relied on Michael Harding paints, valuing their exceptional brightness, depth, and pigment quality as essential to achieving the vivid surfaces and colour intensity that define his work.
Simeon Raphael Gay
Simeon Raphael Gay is a 22-year-old oil painter of Italian, Caribbean, and English descent, currently in his final year at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. His degree show project, Yearning Love, explores the emotional weight of grief and longing through symbolic imagery - drawing on Michelangelo's Pietà and monastic vows to capture the silence and vulnerability of unfulfilled desire. Simeon's work is a meditation on love as both sacred and painful, where devotion transforms into existential struggle.
Iss Mueller
Izabella Mueller is a Polish watercolour artist whose work primarily features delicate and intricate designs. She has a strong passion for creating detailed watercolour illustrations, often inspired by nature and whimsical themes. Over the years, Mueller has honed her skills and developed a unique style that is both vibrant and serene. She now uses Michael Harding watercolours for her artworks, which allows her to achieve rich, luminous colours and intricate details.
Art prizes sponsored by Michael Harding
Alongside the Future Masters programme, we sponsor a selection of art prizes and competitions each year. See what's currently open for entries, with live status updates and deadlines.
Application Guidelines
We welcome applications from young and emerging artists from all over the world. Our goal is to support and highlight exceptional talent, providing a platform for artistic growth and visibility. We aim to equip artists with materials that enable them to reach their full potential.
Eligibility
- • Applicants should be young or emerging artists.
- • We are currently focusing on Oil Paint and Watercolour Artists.
Submission Requirements
- Artist Statement: 300-500 words describing your artistic practice, inspiration, and goals.
- Biography: 200-300 words detailing your background, education, and experiences. Include social media platforms.
- Submission Format: Submit via the contact form.
Application Deadlines
- • Applications are reviewed quarterly.
- • Please allow some time for us to get back to you.
Selection Criteria
- Artistic Merit: Quality, originality, and creativity.
- Alignment with Mission: Work and story aligning with our mission.
- Potential for Growth: Promise and future development.
- Diversity and Inclusion: Fostering a diverse art community.