The theme of the 2025 Winsor & Newton X Paul Smith’s Foundation international art prize 2025 is P.O.V – Defining your point of View and this year’s winners are: Laura Basterra Sanz (Antwerp), Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway (New York), Charlotte Winifred Guérard (London), Michelle Heron (Nottingham), Zhongwen Hu (Shanghai) and Silke Weißbach (Copenhagen).
Following last year’s inaugural edition, Paul Smith’s Foundation has partnered with Winsor & Newton for the second International Art Prize, and an exhibition featuring the 2025 all-woman line up of winning artists is on display at Paul Smith’s flagship London shop in Mayfair.
Group exhibition P.O.V – Defining Your Point of View can be viewed at Paul Smith Space, a permanent gallery housed beneath Paul Smith’s flagship London shop on Albemarle Street. Joined by past exhibitors from Paul Smith’s artistic program, this exhibition explores and celebrates the unique perspectives of each artist. Through diverse mediums and personal narratives, P.O.V invites audiences to engage with the powerful, individual points of view that exist around the world.
Launched by Paul Smith’s Foundation & Winsor & Newton in 2024, the International Art Prize emerged out of necessity, a recognition of the stark need for peer-to-peer support for early career artists, as well as the chance to develop their international networks. As such, the judges are located in each of the cities where the winning artists are based, and are notable for their vital networks and outstanding experience to develop an artist’s professional practice: Marie Laurberg, Director Copenhagen Contemporary (Copenhagen); Stijn Maes, Director Masereel (Antwerp); X Zhu Nowell, Artistic Director Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai); Larry Ossei-Mensah, Curator and Critic (New York); Mark Rappolt, EiC of ArtReview and Founder of ArtReview Asia.
Paul has supported artists for decades through scholarships, mentorship and most recently with the opening of the dedicated gallery, Paul Smith Space in the heart of London’s art district. The International Art Prize builds upon this legacy, established to identify and champion exceptional early career artists from around the world. Professional development is a vital facet of an artist’s professional practice and central to the Foundation’s mission, and through this prize we give artists a paid platform to create new work, develop their commissioning skills and better their global professional and peer networks.” Martha Mosse, Paul Smith’s Foundation Director
Each artist also receives a monetary donation from Paul Smith’s Foundation and up to £1,000 worth of materials of their choosing from Winsor & Newton to make a new piece of work which will be hung for sale in their local Paul Smith shop.
For decades, Sir Paul Smith has championed art and artists. From a 30-year scholarship with the Royal Academy Schools, to a collection of over 10,000 works of art exhibited in stores worldwide. Originals from major household names such as Damien Hirst, Lynette Yiadom-Boake and Banksy are showcased alongside works from early career artists in a globally rotating programme of showcases and selling exhibitions. To date, over 120 artists have exhibited their work around the world with Paul Smith, including existing and especially commissioned pieces.
A world-renowned and market-leading heritage artist materials company, Winsor & Newton was established in London in 1832 and received its first Royal Warrant in 1841 – an honour that it still retains Used by notable names such as Edvard Munch, JMW Turner, Georgia O’Keefe, David Hockney and Piet Mondrian, Winsor & Newton continues to innovate and experiment, launching and re-launching products from the world’s first moist watercolours (1835); the world’s first alkyd oil colour (1976); the artist’s oil bar (1992) and water-soluble oils (1998).
Winsor & Newton are delighted to celebrate the second year of the International Art Prize with Paul Smith’s Foundation. Supporting artists lies at the heart of what we do, not only by providing the materials that help bring their visions to life, but by offering a platform to share their practice and a creative community to belong to. Bringing together all six winning artists and our judges here in London for the first time, makes this year’s exhibition especially meaningful”. Chris Wooff, Winsor & Newton Global Brand Director
Meet the winning artists below:
Laura Basterra Sanz
Antwerp Winner Laura Basterra Sanz creates gestural abstract paintings where movement, intuition, and materiality converge, building layered, textured surfaces that reveal traces of her physical engagement with the canvas. Her colour palette is rich and dynamic, guided by an organic sense of composition rather than a predetermined structure. Laura’s recent exhibitions include: “Essential: Essence In A Space”, RHoK Academie Woluwe, Brussels, BE (2025), “A Letter From A Friend”, Bacio Collective, Bern, CH (2024), “Separation, Connection, Circulation”, GC De Rinck, Brussels, BE (2024),”We Art XL Coup De Coeur”, Abbaye de La Cambre, Brussels, BE (2024), “La Fin Des Semelles”, Les Semelles, Charleville- Mezières, FR (2024),”April’s Abstract Explosion”, Ideelart Gallery, London, UK (2024), “En Vogue Now”, online Artland, IdeelArt Gallery, London, UK (2023).
Charlotte Winifred Guérard
London winner Charlotte Winifred Guérard recently completed her final year at the Royal Academy of Arts School as a Paul Smith’s Foundation scholar. Her practice centres around painting and the ways in which those can be viewed, activated and displayed. Her work explores the notions of painting in space and paintings in motion while the narrative of her images is influenced by her immediate surroundings, landscapes, the everyday and memory.
Charlotte’s recent exhibitions include: Royal Academy of Arts Schools Show, class of 2025, “Heavenly Skeletons”, Coleman Project Space, (2025), “Postcards for Seyòisfjöròu”, Island, Hardpainters (2025) “Matthew’s Boat’, Palmer Gallery (2024), “Lobster Legs / An unwanted Present”, Royal Academy of Arts (2024),‘Three Years’, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2024), “Inner Worlds”, Fitzrovia Gallery, London(2023).
Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway
Originally from Ghana, New York Winner Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway is a mixed media visual artist producing contemporary African art, versed in figurative painting, performance, abstraction and textile making. She upcycles mopping cotton/wool fibres and invites the viewer to explore the versatility of contemporary African women in her textured portraits. Her practice also encompasses ideas about gender roles and womanhood, crafting works and performances that comment on societal challenges she and her fellow African women face.
Recent exhibitions include: CHROMATIC CHOICES, ARTCO Gallery, Aachen, Germany (2024); Spirit and Rhythm of Africa Dance, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as part of DanceAfrica (2023); Celebrating the Black Body, Janet Rady Fine Arts (London, UK), online show (2022). Make We Dance, Nubuke Foundation, Accra, Ghana (2022); and Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway, Online show on Artsy with Nubuke Foundation (2021).
Michelle Heron
Nottingham Winner Michelle Heron is an urban landscape painter from Norfolk, England. Working in acrylic she is known primarily for her paintings that immortalise the many threatened independent shops that make our high streets what they are. Her work has been compared with Edward Hopper & George Shaw for her sensitive use of light and the way her paintings capture the mood and emotion of a place. Her paintings have been featured in the likes of The Guardian and The Londonist.
Recent exhibitions include: Chelsea Art Society 75th Annual Summer Exhibition, Chelsea Old Town Hall, London (2025), Revival, Well Hung Gallery, London (2025), Jackson’s Painting Prize extended longlist The Royal Society of British Artists, Mall Galleries, London (2025). ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (2024), Rogue Women 3, Rogue Studios Manchester (2024).
Silke Weißbach
Copenhagen Winner Silke Weißbach’s practice is rooted at the intersection of material alchemy, emotional resonance, and ecological awareness. Her paintings, sculptures, and video installations operate as living systems – environments where biological agents and intangible elements such as light, colour, fragrance, liquids, language, and memory are combined and shaped through slow transformation. Substances such as spirulina, hyaluronic acid, sugar, formula milk, seaweed and wax act as active agents, initiating processes of crystallisation, fermentation, decomposition, and evaporation.
Recent exhibitions include: Landscapes of Time and Memory, Fred Levine Gallery (2025); At Midland Road and Ember, Informality Gallery (2025, 2024); Kooperation, Nizza Gallery, Berlin (2024); Lavender, Hibernation and Neon, Crypt Gallery (2024); Taking the Light out of the Prism, Duplex, Lisbon (2023); Homegrown, Hauser & Wirth London (2020).
Zhongwen Hu
Shanghai Winner Zhongwen Hu, is a painter, illustrator and animator. Her work emphasises scenes of positive energy – joy, tranquility, love – that spring up in the seemingly mundane motions of e veryday life. Brining emotional sensitivity to the canvas, her work can be found in galleries, books and commercial products.
Recent exhibitions include: The Hole, LA; Mur Mur Lab, Shanghai; Studio Gallery, Shanghai; Vox Populi, PA; The Bishop’s Palace, Wells, UK; Zhou B Art Center, IL; Viridian Artists, NY; Huntington Beach Art Center, CA; Axis Gallery Sacramento, CA; ArtHelix, NY; Point of Contact Gallery, NY; and Baton Rouge Gallery, LA; among others. Zhongwen’s work has been published in Wallpaper*, Kinfolk, It’s Nice That, Colossal, Creative Boom, Booooooom, Artmaze Magazine and Shoutout SoCal.
P.O.V – Defining Your Point of View runs until 12th January, 2026 at Paul Smith Space at 9 Albemarle Street, London. Find out more about Paul Smith’s Foundation here.
