The SCAF Emerging Artist Award has been created to acknowledge up and coming artists of all ages who are living in the Yorkshire region. The intent of the award is to bring recognition and awareness to outstanding visual artists in the region who are at the early stages of their career or who have not yet established a reputation as an artist amongst art curators, buyers and critics.
/ This years subject:
As you are reading the words that make up this paragraph, you are donating some of your valuable time to SCAF. Time has a value to us, it is limited, it passes, and so many of us run our lives constantly watching the clock, filling our calendars with time critical appointments and events planned for the future.
/ Exhibition dates:
The Exhibition runs from 19th August to 13th September 2025. Open to the public on Tues, Fri & Sat 10am-4pm or by appointment.
Venue:
Scott Creative Arts Foundation, York Road
Thirsk, YO7 3AD
/ The Finalists
/ Exhibition Catalogue
/ Exhibition Price List
/ Judging Panel
Dr Sue Armstrong
MA VetMB VetMFHom CertIAVH MRCVS RsHom
Artistic Director & Trustee of SCAF
Sue Armstrong is the Founder of the Scott Creative Arts Foundation and the current Artistic Director. Sue was a close friend of Michael and Eileen Scott and is dedicated to realising their wishes through the work of the Foundation. Providing support and encouragement to emerging artists was a major priority for the Scott’s and to be holding the fourth SCAF emerging artist award is a testament to her commitment to SCAF. Sue, like the Scotts is a passionate believer in the value of the synergistic relationship between arts and science.
Photo by Damian Bramley - DJB Photography
Louise Ventris
SCAF Emerging Artist Award 2024 Winner
Louise is a Yorkshire-based artist, who explores her creativity through painting, immersing herself in the exploration of urban townscapes. 2024 has been an exciting year for Louise, she had her first solo show at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate and was awarded the SCAF Emerging Artist Award for her work 'Threads through time, 13 portraits.’
Louise works intuitively with oil paint and has exhibited her work in various open and group exhibitions, including Contemporary Six ‘Coalescence’, Mercer Open, Leeds Summer Show, and the Old Parcels Office in Scarborough. Her work was selected for the group show ‘Prized 2023’ She has recently become an associate member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts.
Jess Wallace
Artist/Sculptor
Jess rode as a professional National Hunt jockey for six years and on retirement from race riding, attended the Byam Shaw School of Art in London, graduating with distinction. After working with the Natural History Museum making precision drawings, Jess left London for Yorkshire, followed by a small hill farm in West Wales, living with various rescue animals who are the genesis of her work. This has become an intimate record of the distilled moments of this shared existence. Jess finds that working rapidly in very wet clay, from life and memory, allowing the material to play a crucial part in the process, reveals unexpected truths, which are finally cast in bronze.
Debbie Loane
Artist
Debbie Loane trained at Bretton Hall College, Leeds University graduating in 1995 with a BA (hons)1st class in painting. Debbie regularly runs artists workshops in Yorkshire and Scotland and curates exhibitions from her gallery base at Lund Gallery, North Yorkshire.
Recent projects include Artist in Residence on the Cleveland Way National Trail 2019 -2020 and Rahoy Reserve Artist Residency, Sound of Mull 2022 – 2023.
The landscape of the North York Moors and the wild expanses of the north are the inspiration for Debbie’s work.
/ Thank you
Special thanks to Heck! for generously lending their community minibus to us in support of our EAA events, and to Studio YCS for graciously sponsoring this catalogue.
