New Blood Emerging Artists Making an Abstract Expressionist Splash

This week, we're spotlighting two new emerging artists working with dazzling colour to create canvases full of life and movement.

Teeming with energy, the work of Octavia Madden and Toby Wills-Hart sport the vivacious, intuitive mark making we might expect from the abstract expressionist movement of 1960s New York, and artists such as Willem de Kooning and Lee Krasner. Both 2023 Aberystwyth graduates (and nominees for the New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize) are anything but derivative — both intensely original and inventive, these artists have demonstrated an admirable range of work and styles indicating practices that are constantly evolving.

This is an exciting time for these early-career artists, and the perfect time to invest in their work as they spread their wings.

Colour of the Harbour by Octavia Madden

'Noise of the Night' by Octavia Madden

Octavia's work is inspired by the luminous colours and heightened intensity of Aberystwyth at night, and she has already taken part in an impressive array of group exhibitions across the South West. Writing that she responds to her visual surroundings 'in an abstract, expressionist and representational way' in her contemporary exploration of the night, for Octavia her work is just as much about exploring the property of paint itself. Contrasting the glow of streetlights, car headlights, shop signs and illuminated windows with the darker, bigger and older swellings of sea, sky and mountains, Octavia's paintings are at once joyful and profound.

Language of Aberystwyth by Octavia Madden

Using oil paint and oil pastels, the luminous glow of 'Language of Aberystwyth' is seared by the confident pale yellow shapes in the sky above, which could be shooting stars or passing aeroplanes. Below, orange lights explode like bursts of flame - what is the 'language' being spoken here? - while dark blue abstract mark making conjures the bones of buildings.

Study For the Archetype's in Cobalt by Toby Wills-Hart

'Borderline' by Toby Wills-Hart

With a more abstract array of reference and subject, Toby's work is a riot of shape and colour. Intuitive and impulsive, colours surge across these canvases. Containing elements of expressionist mark making and the rich palettes of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gaugin, it is in their abstraction that Toby's pieces are at their most vivid and vital, as he describes his creative process as the paint 'expressing itself through him', surrendering to a meditative process led by instinct and intuition.

'Study For A Garden At The Moment Of Awakening' by Toby Wills-Hart

'Study For A Garden At The Moment of Awakening' is a riot of deep blues, delicate pinks, rich oranges and yellows with layers of texture and markings suggesting foliage, the movement of boughs and flowers in the wind, and even the suggestion of faces and figures in the foreground.

'In Ecstasy Of Being' by Toby Wills-Hart

'The Ecstasy of Being' explodes with joyful pinks, the dark blue, almost black bottom left corner suggesting an ecstatic upwards surge of movement, compounded by the rush of aquamarines and turquoises in the top left and bottom right.