2023 Rising Stars
Invest in the Next Generation of Artists
Plongeon by Camille Jouarre
Artist Monika Morito in their studio
The Best Young Artists
Discover the Best Emerging Artists to Collect in 2023
For over a decade, our curators have published their definitive list of recent art school graduates and up-and-coming artists you should invest in now.
This year they’ve found 28 trailblazing emerging artists— many of whom have recently graduated from BFA and MFA programs—who are making some of the most compelling and collectible art today.
Some are continuing the legacies of art history giants, others are using new technologies, many are exploring contemporary issues and themes, and yet all are creating powerful work that will beautify your home and which has a strong potential to increase in value.
Meet the Selection Committee
Our curators draw on years of rich experience in the art world to identify recent graduates from the best schools around the world who are on the rise and garnering international acclaim.
Rebecca Wilson
Chief Curator & VP Art Advisory, Saatchi Art
Rebecca Wilson was formerly a Director at the Saatchi Gallery, London, where she was instrumental in the launch of the gallery’s online presence. She has over 15 years of experience working with emerging artists and helping private collectors and clients to build art collections.
Erin Remington
Director of Sales & Curation
Erin Remington has a Masters in Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism, and a BS in Business Administration. She studied Art and Art History at the American University of Paris, and prior to joining Saatchi Art worked in art education and museums. She has over a decade of experience in fine arts.
Megan Wright
Senior Curator
Megan Wright has a BS in Business Administration from USC and attended UCLA as part of their CIDA-accredited program in Architecture and Interior Design. Megan has over a decade of experience in sales and management in the art, design, and entertainment industries.
Figurative Art
The Observers
Life consists of small moments. These emerging artists make the mundane memorable in striking compositions inspired by everyday life.
Artist Kristina Baker in their studio
Monika Morito
Self-Taught
Inspired by her home country, the Philippines, Monika Morito turns toward minimalist, natural elements and earthy texture to invite the viewer to experience emotional resonance and appreciation for nature’s beauty with the depths of human sentiment.
Albina Onay
MFA, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, 2022
Focused on the contradiction and connection between memory and reality, Albina Onay uses abstract compositions to depict landscapes that fall between the surreal and the mundane, exploring space and time through the layers of her paintings.
Dylan Riley
MFA, Rhode Island School of Design, 2022
Experimenting with bold colors and geometric shapes, Dylan Riley explores the intriguing interplay between image-processing techniques and the heritage of art history. His paintings invite us to reflect on the impact of technology on our visual experience and modern life.
Kristina Baker
BFA Painting, Rhode Island School of Design, 2015
Integrating symbols from mythology, art history, and religious texts, Kristina Baker skillfully captures profound moments of humility, surrender, and vulnerability on the canvas. Her figurative works invite viewers to embark on an introspective journey through the intricate tapestry of human emotions. Kristina has exhibited throughout the US, including The Other Art Fair Los Angeles edition.
Kunel Gaur
MFA, Wigan & Leigh College, 2002
With a background as a creative director and designer, Kunel Gaur finds inspiration in functional and architectural design, challenging conventional assemblages of materials. He currently works in Toronto, Canada, and last exhibited at The Other Art Fair Brooklyn.
Ray Madrigal
BFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2022
Ray Madrigal’s paintings are born from their queer experiences. Referencing nonhuman objects as vessels for human identity, Ray aspires to convey moments of clarity, absurdity, and healing through their work, seeking to offer solace to those who have shared similar experiences. Ray has exhibited extensively throughout Chicago, including at The Other Art Fair
ABSTRACT ART
The Expressionists
Form and color take centerstage in these exciting new abstract works whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder.
Artist Ha Hoang-Lamy in their studio
Armand Brac
Master Level II, Art Direction & Graphic Design, Esag Penninghen, Paris
Employing the spontaneity and emotion of Abstract Expressionism, French artist Armand Brac creates large-scale oil paintings and paper collages. He uses vibrant colors to encompass sentiment and urgency, echoing the creative tones of jazz and poetry in his substantial compositions. Armand’s work has been exhibited in Los Angeles and Paris, where he resides.
Ha Hoang-Lamy
BAA Interior Design & Fine Arts, Central Michigan University, 2014
Inspired by ancient symbols, Vietnamese artist Ha Hoang-Lamy seeks to create a visual language that resonates with the primordial depths of human consciousness. Ha allows her work to be guided by spontaneity and intuition, utilizing gestural marks, minimal color palettes, and raw textures.
Myung Soo Yi
Self-Taught
Myung Soo views each of her works as a looking glass: both a mirror into the self and a window bridging memories of the past and experiences of the now. She layers traditional Korean paper (Hanji) on canvas to create a reflection while holes burnt into the Hanji create texture, pattern, and story. Myung Soo Yi has exhibited extensively in South Korea.
Miljan Stevanovic
Ph.D., Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts, Belgrade, 2021
Serbian artist Miljan Stevanovic creates imagined realities through ethereal landscapes evocative of dreams and forgotten spaces. He works as a professor in the digital arts, and his work has been exhibited at international shows dedicated to architecture, gamification, and artificial and augmented realities.
ENVIRONMENTAL ART
The Storytellers
From domestic scenes to cityscapes, these artists explore the creative potential in the places and spaces we inhabit day in and day out.
Artist Ruth Poor in their studio
June Siu Ling Wong
BA Fine Art Painting, Hong Kong Art School & RMIT University, 2018
June Wong paints and draws the architecture and people in her environment. Her focus on windows highlights the transitional space of private and public. Since graduating, June has shown in Hong Kong in group and solo exhibitions.
Eleanor Cox
BA, Central Saint Martins UAL, 2023
Eleanor Cox uses her experience in sound and video making to inform her observational and contemplative oil paintings. A recipient of The Other Art Fair’s “New Futures Art Prize,” Eleanor will exhibit her work at the London Fair in October.
Emma Franc
MFA, Wimbledon School of Art, 2004
Muted colors are juxtaposed with bright shapes in Emma Franc’s paintings of “atmospheric places.” She often draws into the paint to create interesting marks and uses pattern and texture to create playful, sometimes brooding, artworks that draw the eye. Emma regularly exhibits her work throughout London.
Ruth Poor
MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2022
Citing inspiration from Toile prints and 18th-century pastoral paintings, Ruth Poor creates atmospheric landscapes. Ruth’s work has a modern twist employing mixed media and contemporary themes. Ruth has exhibited in Chicago and throughout the US.
Ann Wong
BA Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, 2020
With detailed and repetitive forms, Ann Wong tells surreal stories. She communicates the narrative in a stream of consciousness—some stories stem from her imagination, but most from everyday happenings retold through her brush.
ENVIRONMENTAL ART
The Portraitists
These emerging artists’ inventive takes on the age-old genre of portraiture will make you rethink what it means to capture a person’s essence.
Artist Aleksandr Biruk in their studio
Aleksandr Biruk
2018, MFA, St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design
Belarusian painter Aleksandr Biruk creates joyful compositions which he likens to “visual music.” Using cheerful color palettes, playful silhouettes, and calm figures, Aleksandr transmits positive emotion from the canvas onto the viewer. He has exhibited in solo and group shows from Russia to the Netherlands.
Oluwafemi Afolabi
MFA, Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo, 2017
Oluwafemi Afolabi draws inspiration from his Nigerian upbringing, using bright textile patterns to render beautiful female portraits which access the deep beauty and complex emotional capacity of women. Since 2021, he has participated in several group exhibitions across Nigeria.
Lee Jenkinson
MFA, St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, 2018
Lee Jenkinson’s solitary, floating figures interact with an invisible environment evoking a dream state. This, in combination with nods to streetwear and the everyday, emphasizes the buzz of city life and the pleasure of quiet moments.
Steve Moors
Self-Taught
Steve Moors’s large, offbeat portraits invite the viewer into a whimsical state of mind, observing the paradoxical interplay of humanity’s primal nature and our contemporary lives. Steve is of British and American heritage and has exhibited extensively across the US and UK, including at The Other Art Fair.
Greg Genestine-Charlton
MFA, University of Brighton, 2007
London-based artist Greg Genestine-Charlton creates complexly layered portraits with compositions reminiscent of patchwork quilts. Since 2010 he has exhibited across Europe and the UK, including The Other Art Fair London.
Camille Jouarre
BA Graphic Design, Brassart School, France, 2015
French artist Camille Jouarre captures the beauty of human movement, represented through quirky gestures and figures in peculiar postures. Camille’s background in graphic design informs the angular graphic compositions which draw inspiration from Cubism.
Ella Jackson
BA, Central Saint Martins University, 2023
London-based artist Ella Jackson explores human relationships and the emotion of love using a time-intensive method of pointillism in her monumental portraits. Since 2021, Ella has exhibited in several group shows across London and is the winner of the upcoming Bloomsbury Festival Art Competition to be exhibited in October of 2023.
Mixed media ART
The Experimenters
Discover the unexpected in this collection of works utilizing innovative techniques and materials to create eye-catching effects.
Artist Patricia Orpilla in their studio
Jeeyon ‘G’ Roslie
Self-Taught
Korean-American textile artist Jeeyon Roslie uses natural materials to create her own bespoke palette for each work of art by hand dyeing yardages of flax linen with botanical plant and earth mineral pigments. Her compositions are stylized and evocative of modernist abstraction and Zen Minimalism.
Nichole Gronvold Roller
MFA, Bradley University, 2023
Admiring past practices of 20th-century geometric abstraction, Nichole Roller’s artwork is an intersection of fine art, architecture, and design, referencing underlying themes in art history and mixing and merging concepts. Her geometric-shaped paintings embrace contemporary art practices of relevant pluralism.
Patricia Orpilla
MFA, Yale University, 2022
Patricia Orpilla is a visual artist who uses an interdisciplinary process to create paintings, prints, and textiles, drawing relationships between materially or metaphorically interdependent systems. Her latest work uses print to explore the relationship of weaving to language. Patricia recently completed an artist residency at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
Amadi Greenstein
BFA Textiles, California College of the Arts, 2019
Amadi Greenstein is a multimedia artist and textile designer based in Palo Alto, California. Her work explores personal questions around identity and theories of the sublime through her practice of weaving.
Cho Hyun Seok
BFA Painting, Kyungsung University, 1999
South Korean artist Cho Hyun finds inspiration through natural objects, cityscapes, and personal streams of consciousness. His blend of the natural and artificial finds harmony through color and texture.
Dylan Bardoe
Self-Taught
Through a mixed media approach and a combination of both image-making and writing, Dylan Bardoe creates vibrant, playful work that seeks to unsettle and entertain. His work follows a psychedelic dystopian narrative, drawing inspiration from music, film, illustrators, and comic book artists. Dylan currently studies fine art at the Camberwell College of Arts.