Considering Art Podcast – Esther Neslen, multi-disciplinary

Esther Neslen is a sculptor, ceramicist and educator in London who works both figuratively and in abstraction. In this episode, she talks about how art was a way of easing anxiety as a child, her early fascination with the human form, how sculpture and clay didn’t mix at art college, working as a graphic designer and then as an animator before returning to sculpture, how she placed human form sculptures in public places in London, her depiction of human relationships in abstract forms and how she has turned national and global events that have affected her personally into her art.

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Considering Art Podcast – Louise Pragnell, portrait artist

For 20 years, Louise Pragnell has made a speciality of painting the portraits of members of royal families and military top brass. In this episode, she talks about drawing her mother as a child, her years of studying art before turning to portraiture, what she defines as modern sensibility in her paintings, how she strives to capture the essence of her sitters, the decisions over the details and poses in her portraits, how she started painting the royals and military, her recent commission to paint the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg and what she paints for fun.

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Considering Art Podcast – Graham Crowley, painter

Graham Crowley has had a long and distinguished career as a painter and teacher, won the John Moores Painting Prize in 2023 and holds strong views on what he believes painting is and should be. In this episode, he talks about his lack of cultural beginnings, his experience of conceptualism at art school and how it strengthened his belief in painting, the influence of the French painter Fernand Leger, his views on illustration, why he painted landscapes in the 1990s, how he’s attracted by luminosity in paintings, why he dislikes being called an artist, and about his prize-winning work Light Industry.

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Considering Art Podcast – Annemarieke Kloosterhof, multi-media

Annemarieke Kloosterhof is a London-based Dutch artist who works in painting, collage, design and particularly in all things paper including single or multi-layered paper-cut illustrations, paper props, film sets and large-scale installations. In this episode, she talks about how her passion for paper first began, how nostalgia has been a theme in her work, the importance of experimentation, how she made a spectacular paper installation for the Bridgerton TV series, making three West-end theatres from paper, her use of recycled paper, how her paintings deal with issues such as female sexuality and how she has made paper versions of classic furniture for London’s Leighton House museum.

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Considering Art Podcast – Reena Saini Kallat, multi-media

Reena Saini Kallat is an Indian artist who has gained international recognition for works that focus on aspects of global conflicts, injustices, inequalities, and climate catastrophes. In this episode, she talks about her family story of Partition and the legacy of it that remains in her home city of Mumbai, how she expresses the issue of global boundaries and frontiers that cause dissension, how the inter-dependence of species inspires her, how she uses legal documents in her work to represent ideas of responsibility and freedom, how people who have disappeared are another source of influence, and about her current sculpture at Frieze London that features the bird calls of extinct species.

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Considering Art Podcast – Verity Babbs, art historian, author and comedian

In this episode, Verity talks about how she became interested in art history, how she got into stand-up and improvisation while studying for her art history degree at Oxford University, how she developed and founded the Art Laughs event in which comedians give art-themed stand-up routines in art galleries, and about her new book entitled The History of Art in One Sentence that traces 500 years of western art movements written in a playful way.

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Considering Art Podcast – Bianca Raffaella, painter

Bianca Raffaella won the 2025 Women in Art Prize, a remarkable achievement for an artist who has visual impairment and is registered blind. In this episode, she talks about the nature of this impairment, how she developed an eating disorder in her youth, how she spent successful years as a fashion designer, how lockdown led her to return to painting, her technique for putting paint on the canvas, her experience of applying for the Tracey Emin Artist Residency, how she has become an activist for other sight-impaired people and how she collaborated with a printmaker for her current exhibition of portraits.

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Considering Art Podcast – Sarah Adams, landscape painter

For the past 20 years, Sarah Adams has captured in oil the rugged features of the north coast of Cornwall where she lives. In this episode, she talks about the artistic journey she has made towards becoming a landscape painter, the extraordinary efforts she makes to explore the stacks, arches and caves that she depicts, her process involving detailed primary sketches and subsequent under-glazing and amplified colour, how she has noticed gradual changes in the coastline over the years and the threat of plastic waste to the coastal environment.

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Considering Art Podcast – Britt Boutros-Ghali, painter

Britt Boutros-Ghali was born in Norway but for the past five decades has lived in Egypt having married into one of the country’s foremost families. Her emotional abstracts and figurative expressionism are much sought after and she has been awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Women in the Arts by the Egyptian government. In this episode, she talks about her upbringing in Norway, how a move to Paris kickstarted her artistic career, her relocation to Egypt, how she paints every day with no plan and with many layers, how an exhibition in Norway in 2005 was marred by an unfortunate incident, and how she is striving to paint a masterpiece.

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Considering Art Podcast – Deborah Grice, painter

Deborah Grice is a prize-winning British painter of atmospheric landscapes with a contemporary twist. In this episode, she talks about how she had ambitions to become a war artist, how moving from Glasgow to London to study art changed her practice, how ill health stifled many an interesting occupation, the origins of her geometric lines and forms in her work, how Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year reinvigorated her art career and how early feelings of emotional deprivation and her concerns for the future manifest themselves in the “visual dissonance” in her paintings.

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