Saskia Colwell

Explicit nude executed in grayscale using charcoal powder onto Linen.

Saskia Colwell (b. 1999) is a London-based, London-born and bred artist. She is currently enrolled in the Masters Painting Programme at the Royal College of Art. Prior to that, she earned her BA (Hons) in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art (2022) after completing her Foundation year at the Royal Drawing School (2018). Colwell’s work is held in numerous important private collections, and highlights of recent group exhibitions include Conscious Unconscious at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2023) and Summer Lovin’ curated by Joan Tucker & Henry Relph at Stems Gallery, Paris (2022). She will have her debut solo exhibition this autumn in Paris.

My tightly cropped, intimate paintings are rendered in a reductive grayscale, paring them back to their basic instinct, focusing on life's intricacies through an anonymous lens. The unguarded sensuality of my work invites a voyeuristic or even fetishistic reading of human desire. It's autobiographical and almost an oxymoron due to the voyeurism that is usually reserved for the other, not the self, asking the viewer to look beyond the naked image and to confront their own psyche. I believe that my paintings are a powerful reminder of the complexities of human desire and the importance of the reflectivity of self.