Young Artists at the Fitzwilliam Museum

A huge thank you to everyone that submitted their application to take part in the Young Artists at Fitzwilliam Museum open call this year. We would like to say congratulations to the six artists chosen to participate in 2026 and introduce you to them below.

The six artists used the studio space at Fitzwilliam Museum on weekends 3 and 4 in July. Visitors could see and buy their work, and speak with them over these two weekends.

Martha Doyle

Illustration

I’m Martha aka Arti Martie, a recent graduate from the University of Brighton. My illustrations focus on bringing a playful touch to everyday things through vibrant colours, quirky humour, and a love for the unexpected.


I love experimenting with all sorts of mediums, from lino printing and wax crayons to gouache and digital doodles on my iPad. My illustrations are filled with odd little characters, delicious foods, sweet animals, and all things nice. Whether it’s a silly scene or a drawing of my pet dog Reggie, I aim to make art that feels joyful and leaves a smile on your face.

I am completely self-taught and started illustrating during lockdown, but it is a hobby that has well and truly stuck. It’s become a great way for me to unwind, focusing on creating nice things for nice people!

Griffin Skeates

Textiles

Creating and experimenting with all sorts of materials has always interested me -I learnt how to crochet in 2020, and from there I’ve picked up a whole range of fibre and textile arts – knitting, spinning, weaving, felting and crochet. I am currently focused on spinning, aiming to share a craft that has shaped the world, from prehistoric to modern times, all of which have needed spun thread in clothes and fabrics.

My work is inspired by lots of colour and texture, wanting to explore the qualities that different breeds of sheep’s wool have in the finished yarn and the sensation of feeling the fibres flow through my hands as I work.

Louis Marek

Photography

Louis Marek’s Photography focuses on candid moments that become core memories in retrospect. He is drawn to the love people have with each other; whether that’s romantic, friendship or an appreciation of a stranger.

Through his work in street photography and Live events he aims to capture the shared love of sound and the hot and sweaty rooms of the underground music scene. This music continues to play as a soundtrack throughout the rest of his photographic practice.

His work has been exhibited at Gallery V in Cambridge, Glasgow gallery of Photography, and has been featured in a collection in Art VUE 2022.

Annapurna Malavika Austin

Painting

Growing up in the atmospheric landscape of the Fen, I have always been fascinated by the dualities of beauty and decay, birth and death, reflected in the vast horizons around here. At the start of this year, I gave birth to my first cAnnapurna Malavika Austinhild, elevating my practice as I encounter my own materiality, creativity and vulnerability in the physical world. My work confronts the power of motherhood through the transformed female body and our relationship to the earth, as I continue to paint the hidden narratives of myth, memory and identity.

Pushing the techniques of oil painting, printmaking and drawing, my practice explores the dramatic landscape of the fens and my cross-culture life journey in figures echoing the mythological and sublimity of the natural world: a swan, a stag, two figures by the water’s edge under East Anglia’s expansive skies.

Daniel Harrison

Conceptual

Daniel Harrison (b. 1997) is an artist from the North West, working at the intersection of sound and spatiality, and drawing on the shared history of computation and textiles. His work questions our relationship with technology in an age of autonomy. After studying at Central Saint Martins and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts Paris, Harrison moved to Cambridge to begin research in Aural Diversity at the Cambridge Centre for Digital Humanities. Having exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, Nevada and London this new series of works challenges contemporary understandings and assumptions about how we experience sound, and questions how materials and artefacts oscillate across time.

Scarlett Joslin

Multi-disciplinary

I am a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, photography, printmaking, and mixed media. My practice explores identity, memory, and human connection, using layered imagery and experimental processes to investigate the emotions and experiences that shape us. I am interested in how art can communicate feelings that are often difficult to express in words, creating space for reflection and personal interpretation.

Working across a range of materials allows me to develop ideas through experimentation, with each process influencing the direction of the work. Rather than seeking definitive answers, I use making as a way to explore questions surrounding identity, emotion, and shared experience. By combining traditional and contemporary techniques, I create work that invites viewers to slow down, engage with atmosphere and feeling, and form their own connections. I hope my work encourages moments of reflection, opening up conversations about memory, belonging, and the emotional experiences that connect us all.