Staff & Student Highlight: Heatherleys exhibitors and award winners at the RBA Annual Exhibition
Every year a number of Heatherleys staff and students exhibit at the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition. We’re proud to present some of this years’ Heatherleys exhibitors and award winners.
This year, Heatherleys alumna Natalia Glinoer received The Surgeon’s Prize for her painting, 161 – iPad, and tutor Melissa Scott Miller was awarded The Huaicun Zhang Award. More of Melissas work can be seen and is available for purchase via the Mall Galleries website.
Current Ceramics Sculpture student and Portrait Diploma alumna Evelyn Hong also succeeded in having work accepted into the exhibition.
“I am thrilled that my painting Six Pigeons will be exhibited at the RBA Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries… It was inspired by a lunchtime visit to Russell Square where I witnessed a flurry of pigeons forming an orderly and very British queue so they could dive bomb for food scraps! This amused me so I made a quick pencil and watercolour drawing on the spot in a sketchbook and developed it into an oil painting.”
Congratulations to all the exhibitors and award winners in the 2024 edition of another fantastic show by the Royal Society of British Artists.
Exhibition Dates
Heatherleys Exhibitors
Melissa Scott Miller – Website / Instagram
Melissa Scott-Miller is a highly accomplished painter who has achieved significant recognition for her work. She was elected a member of the Royal British Artists in 2018, and has won numerous awards, including the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize (£15,000) in 2008. Her work has been shown in many group exhibitions, including the Mark Jason Gallery; New English Art Club; Royal Society of Portrait Painters. She has had several solo exhibitions in New York. Melissa is currently a tutor at Heatherleys School of Fine Art and the Royal Drawing School.
Natalia Glinoer – Instagram
Statement
My work reflects my immediate environment and the relationships I have to people. I strive to create a genuine feeling and build layers of time looking into an image caught in a warm colour palette. I work intently from observation and the atmosphere I feel when I paint or etch. Time and memory are constant themes in my paintings. I’m interested in painterly realism, a sense of capturing a living and breathing person. I’m fascinated by anatomy as well as the human condition. My themes are exploring relationships, identity, vulnerability, my struggles with loneliness, isolation and anxiety. I paint people as a way to communicate those feelings and to connect. I work with friends and family. My work is very intuitive and I deal with a lot of intense emotions which is part of my process. I’m heavily influenced by the highly emotionally charged portraits by Kathe Kollwitz, Andrew Wyeth, Victor Wang’s contemporary use of paint and Michelangelo’s sculptures as well as the natural world.
Bio
Natalia Glinoer is an artist based in Brighton. She studied at City and Guilds of London Art School, 2014-2016 and at the Heatherley school of Fine Art, 2018-2021. In 2017, Natalia won the RBA Rome Scholarship where she travelled to Rome for one month, studying the High Renaissance, Baroque paintings and sculptures that helped inspire her current work. Natalia also won the 2023 Royal Society of British Artist’s Michael Harding Award and The Surgeon’s Prize in 2024. She is predominantly an oil painter and a printmaker. She has and continues to work on private commissions and models for life drawing.
Natalia has also exhibited across the UK, notably at the Green and Stone Gallery, The Royal Society of British Artists, The New English Art Club, ING Discerning Eye, The Society of Women Artists at the Mall Galleries and The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Evelyn Hong – Instagram
Portrait Diploma Alumna (2021) and Ceramic Sculpture Student.
When asked about her experienced Evelyn said, “I am thrilled that my painting Six Pigeons will be exhibited at the RBA Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries… It was inspired by a lunchtime visit to Russell Square where I witnessed a flurry of pigeons forming an orderly and very British queue so they could dive bomb for food scraps! This amused me so I made a quick pencil and watercolour drawing on the spot in a sketchbook and developed it into an oil painting.”
She is, “currently making drawings and ceramic sculpture inspired and developed from a monthly collaboration with two dance schools: Trinity Laban in Deptford and Rambert in Waterloo.”
She would like to how, she has “been very happy to study part time at Heatherleys on the Wednesday ceramic sculpture course taught by Tessa Eastman who has been a source of great encouragement!”
Find them at Heatherleys
Melissa Scott Miller teaches on the Portrait Diploma, in Open Studio/Drop in Sessions and, in the summer term, The Urban Landscape: Painting and Drawing London.
Natalia Glinoer is a graduate of Heatherleys’ Diploma in Portraiture.
Evelyn Hong is a graduate of Heatherleys’ Diploma in Portraiture. (2021) and a Ceramic Sculpture Student.