Judy Clarkson

Silver Award

'Paradise Lost' portrays a dreamlike landscape: figures, some clutching mobile phones, cling to the shore of a burning landscape, confused, disoriented, despairing; some in groups, some alone; a particularly poignant dog huddles on a rock. Moved by images of populations displaced by wildfires, I sought to convey the hellish scenarios increasingly erupting throughout the world: fires and floods cast peoples into an apocalyptic future they struggle to comprehend. Posing the question of how we can address and combat the horrors of climate change, 'Paradise Lost' asks us what we want our world to become.

Born in Harrogate, UK, I studied Fine Art at St Martin's School of Art, London. Since graduating, I have pursued figurative painting in an effort to convey the human condition. In 2022, I won the Platinum Award for The Cancer Feminine. Other prizes include the Judges Choice Prize in the 2021 Chaiya Art Awards, and in 2018, The Holly Bush Emerging Woman Painter Prize. I have also been shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize 2019, The New Lights Art Prize 2020, 2023 and have exhibited widely in galleries such the Mall Galleries (Ing Discerning Eye, Society of Women Artists) also the JD Malat Gallery and Gallery Marquess, both in Mayfair.