VAA Announces Ella Williams as New Artist Award Winner at RSA New Contemporaries 2026
The Visual Artists Association (VAA) is pleased to announce the recipient of the VAA New Artist Award 2026, presented as part of RSA New Contemporaries 2026 at the Royal Scottish Academy. The award has been presented to Ella Williams of Edinburgh College of Art, recognising outstanding artistic potential at a pivotal stage in an emerging artist’s career.
Presented as part of the Royal Scottish Academy’s bicentenary programme, celebrating 200 years of championing art and architecture in Scotland, RSA New Contemporaries remains Scotland’s largest and most high-profile platform for emerging artists and architects, bringing together graduates from leading institutions across the country. Now in its seventeenth year, the exhibition presents a dynamic and ambitious range of work spanning painting, sculpture, filmmaking, photography, printmaking, installation, performance, and architecture, offering a compelling snapshot of the ideas and practices shaping contemporary art in Scotland today
Winner: Ella Williams
all things considered, 2025–6 Acrylic on canvas
these past months, 2025–6 Acrylic on canvas
today, yesterday and the rest, 2025–6 Acrylic on canvas
Ella Williams is an Edinburgh-based painter and recent Edinburgh College of Art graduate. Her work approaches how transitory experiences can be documented materially through paint, narrativising fleeting observations through visual storytelling. Her large-scale compositions are drawn from an experiential archive of images gathered through observation, operating as imperfect translations of non-linear periods of time. Influenced by the compositionally rich symbolism of medieval panel painting and modernist literature, Ella incorporates linearity, repetition, and symbolism to mythologise conceptions of the past through re-arrangements of visual anchors. She is a recipient of an RSA John Kinross Scholarship and an RBA Rising Stars exhibitor.
The VAA New Artist Award provides a comprehensive professional development package valued at £2,000, including VAA Premium Membership, a year of mentorship, access to online short courses, and opportunities to exhibit with the VAA, offering meaningful and sustained support beyond graduation.
“It was a privilege to attend this year’s RSA New Contemporaries and to be part of the judging process. The standard of work was exceptionally high, reflecting the strength of emerging artistic talent in Scotland today. At the VAA, we are committed to supporting artists beyond graduation by providing clear pathways into sustainable professional practice. Ella Williams’ work stood out for its clarity of vision and potential, and we are delighted to support her at this important stage in her career.”
Shirley-Ann O’Neill, Director, Visual Artists Association
Highly Commended Artists
The VAA also recognises six Highly Commended artists for their exceptional contributions to this year’s exhibition. Each will receive VAA Premium Membership and access to professional development resources to support the continued growth of their practice.
Peripheral View, 2026 Acrylic on canvas
Amy McLean
Edinburgh College of Art
Amy McLean (b. 2004, Fife) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2025 with a BA (Hons) in Painting. Her work explores visual coincidence, perceptual recognition, and the human impulse to connect disparate forms. Bringing together historical, found, and personal imagery, she examines how memory, cultural context, and cognitive bias shape perception. Amy has been nominated for the New Blood Art Emerging Art Prize and the Clason-Harvie Bursary, and will undertake a residency at Fish Factory, Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland in April 2026.
Instagram: @amymacmclean
Veronica Mee Glasgow
School of Art
Born in Glasgow in 1972, Veronica Mee spent thirty years working as an NHS dentist before fulfilling a lifelong wish to study fine art, graduating from Glasgow School of Art in June 2025 with a first-class honours degree in Painting and Printmaking. By adopting the practices of sewing and embroidery, she seeks to dismantle socially constructed ideas of class and gender. Using textiles, thread, and household materials alongside paint, her work explores identity, invisible labour, and societal expectations through the lens of a working mother.
Instagram: @veemeeart
Embracing the Chaos, 2026 Fabric, thread and bleach
I Love You More, 2025 Oil on canvas
Nicola Mackintosh
Gray’s School of Art
Nicola Mackintosh is a proud Aberdonian and graduate of Gray’s School of Art, where she received a Special Recognition Award. A self-described true painter, her practice is rooted in a celebration of life, processing grief and a deeper understanding of her working-class upbringing through close attention to life’s most fleeting moments. She is currently pursuing a full-time Fine Art degree.
Instagram: @leadbasedpaints
Agnes Little
Glasgow School of Art
Agnes Little is a Welsh-American artist and recent graduate of Glasgow School of Art whose work explores physical embodiment and materiality as a methodology for art-making, often using endurance performance and sculptural elements to examine systems theories and interactive practice. Her project Running Through Cybernetic Meadows uses random computer functions to dictate the directions of a series of twenty-six runs, the shapes of which were used to create a typeface and subsequent publication in collaboration with graphic designer Lydia Harris.
Instagram: @lordagneslittle
Systems Alphabet 1, 2025
Melodics, 2026 Oil on canvas
Christopher Ivor
Adam Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design
Christopher Ivor Adam (b. 1999, Paisley) graduated from DJCAD in May 2025. Alongside painting and printmaking, he makes songs and films and writes crosswords for The Times and Financial Times under the name ‘Magnum’. His undergraduate thesis received the dissertation prize from Generator Projects. Adam has received an SSA New Graduate Award, the Alan Woods Memorial Prize, and an Art Angel Award, and was awarded the Edinburgh Printmakers’ Award at the SSA’s 127th Annual Exhibition in early 2026.
Instagram: @christopherivoradam.
Tom Speedy
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design
Tom Speedy graduated from DJCAD in 2025 with First Class Honours. A recipient of the RSA John Kinross Scholarship and shortlisted for the New Blood Emerging Artist Prize, his paintings explore open and ambiguous narratives reflecting states of drifting, separation, and displacement. His present body of work draws on his experience of the Palio in Siena. Two of Tom’s degree show paintings were exhibited at Unit London during Frieze Week 2025.
Instagram: @_tomspeedy
Fisher Boy, 2025 Oil on canvas