Artist Biography
Felicity Talman is a British artist based in rural West Wales. She graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in Fine Art in 2025 and is currently a postgraduate MA Fine Art student at Central Saint Martins. Her practice is rooted in sustained, process-led drawing that investigates what it means to live with nature through attentive observation of vegetal subjects encountered in daily life. Working primarily with charcoal and pastel, she develops drawings over repeated sittings, allowing time, change, and duration to become active elements within the work rather than subjects to be depicted.
Her approach treats drawing as a site of encounter shaped through acts of looking, noticing, and returning. Through accumulative marks and subtle tonal shifts, her work reflects on the relationship between human perception and the temporal rhythms of plant life. In 2025 she received the Unison Young Artist Award at the Pastel Society Annual Exhibition, and her work has been selected for exhibition in London and internationally. She is an Associate Member of the Pastel Society of America and a member of ArtCan.

Artist Statement
My practice explores our relationship with plant life through sustained attention, drawing, printmaking and collage. Working directly from living plants over extended periods of time, I return to the same subjects again and again, allowing both the work and my understanding of them to develop alongside their continual growth and change. Rather than capturing a single moment, each piece becomes a record of repeated encounters, where time, attention and making are inseparable.
I am drawn to the density and complexity of the natural world: overlapping leaves, shifting forms and the quiet entanglements that often go unnoticed. Through layering, erasure and fragmentation, I seek to reflect this richness while acknowledging that nature is never still. Plants exist within rhythms and timescales that differ from our own, and through sustained acts of making I attempt to work alongside those slower temporalities rather than simply observe them.
Ultimately, I hope my work encourages a slower, more attentive way of looking. By inviting viewers to spend time with the layered complexity of plant life, I hope to create space for a deeper appreciation of the living world and our place within it.
EDUCATION
2025 - 2027: University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins) - MA Fine Art: Digital
2019 - 2025: The Open College of the Arts (OCA) / The Open University (OU) – BA (Hons) in Fine Art (First Class Honours)
AWARDS
2025: Unison Young Artist Award (Pastel Society Annual Exhibition)
2020: SAA Artists of the Year - Best Young Still Life Award
2020: SAA Artists of the Year - Best Young Animal/Wildlife Award
EXHIBITIONS
2026: Spectrum, NHS Tavistock, London
2026: Subject to Change, CSM Postgraduate Interim Show, London
2025: Young Welsh Artists Exhibition, MOMA Machynlleth
2025: (Re) discovering me, Mission Gallery, Swansea.
2025: Growing Under One Sky, Scolton Manor, Haverfordwest
2025: Vegetal Encounters, Chate Room at King Street Gallery, Carmarthen (16th May - 11th June)
2025: IAPS 46th Open Division, IAPS Webshow (Online)
2025: The Pastel Society 126th Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
2024: The Pastel Society 125th Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London.
2024: Finding Place Exhibition, Crawley.
2024: Crawley Summer Exhibition, Crawley.
2023:Memory, Absence and Experience, The Ancient Priors, Crawley
2022: 6th Annual Pure Color International Juried Exhibition of Pastel Paintings
2021: SAA Artists of the Year - Shortlisted in the Professional Abstract Category
2020: SAA Artists of the Year
MEDIA AND PUBLICATIONS
2025: "Gardening as Artistic Practice," Issue 67 Summer 2025 Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture
2025: Work featured in Edge Zine Issue 14: Encounters
2025: "Pastel Society Awards 2025," Unison Colour
2022: "Felicity Talman Inspired by Seaweed," Pastel Today
2022: Work featured in Creative Crawley Winter Drawing Workshop Brochure
2022: Featured in Artist Talk Magazine, Issue 20
2021: Featured on OCA social media platforms and through partnerships with Leisure Painter and The Artist magazines
Professional Development
2026: Awarded the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust Grant for Academic Year 26/27
2025: Shortlisted for VAA Art500 International Prize
2025: Critical Context Course, Contemporary Art Academy
2025: ArtCan Member
2024: Personal Practice Course (Artist Support Pledge Scholarship), Contemporary Art Academy
2024: Associate Member, Pastel Society of America (ongoing)
2020–2021: Fine Art Programme Representative, OCA Periodic Review