collecting tips11 min read

Emerging Artists to Watch: 9 Painters, Fiber Artists and Ceramicists You Can Still Collect

By · January 15, 2024

Emerging Artists to Watch: 9 Painters, Fiber Artists and Ceramicists You Can Still Collect

Emerging Artists to Watch: 9 Painters, Fiber Artists and Ceramicists You Can Still Collect

Most "artists to watch" lists are written to be shared, not used. They name artists who already have waiting lists, or they pad the list with names nobody can find. This one is meant to be used. Every artist below is real, is working now, and sells new work on the primary market through a gallery you can contact. Every milestone is linked to the gallery, museum or publication that reports it.

The list is organised by medium, because medium shapes most of what a collector has to think about: how big the work is, how it is lit and hung, how it ages, and what care it will need. There are four painters, three artists working in fiber, one in clay, and one who paints on found objects.

How I chose them:

  • Early-career or newly visible. Most had their first solo show with their current gallery, or their first show in a new country, between 2024 and 2026.
  • Verifiable momentum. A museum presentation, a prize, a residency, or a solo show at a serious gallery in the last two years.
  • A clear way to buy. Each artist has a gallery that handles sales. I haven't listed prices unless a price was published, because asking prices change and a gallery will give you the current number faster than any article.

Several of these artists were also picked for Artsy's Vanguard lists for 2025 and 2026, which draw on hundreds of gallery nominations. I've checked each entry against the gallery or institution pages linked below rather than relying on any single list.

Painting

1. Emil Sands

Based in: New York (born London, 1998) Medium: Oil on linen; smaller works in oil on paper Gallery: Victoria Miro, in partnership with Olney Gleason

Sands paints figures in open landscapes, seascapes and forest clearings that work like stage sets, with people reading one another's gestures. The poses borrow from classical sculpture and Cézanne, but the bodies are deliberately awkward, exaggerated and partly nude. Sands has cerebral palsy, and Kasmin's exhibition text describes the paintings as a way to revise strained memories of the outdoors with a charged sense of freedom. He studied Classics at Cambridge before a Henry Fellowship at Yale, and he writes as well as paints.

Recent milestones: His first solo show with Kasmin, Salt in the throat, ran in New York from January 9 to February 15, 2025. Victoria Miro announced representation in January 2026 and gave him a solo show, Watchmen, at its Venice space from February 3 to March 7, 2026. A memoir, I Am Not Achilles, is forthcoming from Scribner and Picador.

Where to see or buy: Victoria Miro (London and Venice) and Olney Gleason (New York).

2. Emily Kraus

Based in: London (born New York, 1995) Medium: Paint on raw canvas, made on a custom rolling apparatus Gallery: Luhring Augustine

Kraus loops raw canvas around four stainless steel struts that act as rollers, then works inside this cube-like frame. She applies paint, pulls the canvas around the structure, and lets the rollers smear and spread the pigment. Because only a narrow band of canvas is visible at any moment, she works partly from visual memory. The results are long, rhythmic abstractions that record both her deliberate marks and the chance effects of the device. She studied painting at the Royal College of Art after a BA in religious studies at Kenyon College.

Recent milestones: Her first New York solo show, In Relation, opened at Luhring Augustine's Tribeca space on April 11, 2026 and ran through June 13. In 2024 she had solo shows at Fondazione Bonollo in Vicenza, Galleri Opdahl in Stavanger and Galería Mascota in Mexico City. She is a Hopper Prize recipient and was shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize.

Where to see or buy: Luhring Augustine, New York; earlier work through The Sunday Painter, London.

Collector note: For the New York show, some paintings ran beyond the gallery walls. Ask about dimensions before you fall for something that won't fit through your door.

3. Noelia Towers

Based in: Chicago (born Barcelona, 1992) Medium: Oil on linen Gallery: de boer (Los Angeles and Antwerp)

Towers paints women in states of tension, tender and unsettled at once, in scenes that hint at power, family archetypes and trauma without spelling out a story. Her CV describes paintings that "reflect on fleeting gestures and relationships." The figures are polished and theatrical, which makes the small signs of distress in them land harder.

Recent milestones: Solo shows at de boer in Los Angeles (Account of Preceding Events, 2025), Stems Gallery in Paris (Broken String of Pearls, 2024), and Marquez Art Projects in Miami (Night Visions, 2024, curated by Alex Gartenfeld). In 2026 her work was included in TIME's "25 Works That Define America Now," and she was named to the Artsy Vanguard 2026.

Where to see or buy: de boer; she has also shown with Half Gallery in New York.

4. Taylor Simmons

Based in: New York (born Atlanta, 1990) Medium: Acrylic, oil, spray paint and airbrush on canvas Gallery: Public Gallery, London

Simmons paints tightly framed, heavily layered scenes of Black life, built from found photographs and viral video clips. Artviewer's coverage of his 2025 show compares his method to sampling: he takes "if you know you know" moments and gives them the weight of history painting. His recent work has turned more personal, with family portraits and domestic interiors alongside the pop-cultural sources.

Recent milestones: His second solo show at Public Gallery, HangTime, ran from February 28 to March 29, 2025. The Studio Museum in Harlem lists him as a 2026 artist in residence.

Where to see or buy: Public Gallery, London. Keep an eye on the Studio Museum's program for a chance to see new work from the residency.

Fiber and Textile

5. Élise Peroi

Based in: Brussels and Arles (born Nantes, 1990) Medium: Painted silk and linen, cut and rewoven on wooden frames Gallery: Carvalho, New York

Peroi paints floral motifs on silk, cuts the painted fabric into strips, and reweaves it on a loom. The wooden frames she weaves on stay with the finished piece, so each work is also a freestanding screen you can walk around. Colossal described the warp and weft as "loose, delicate, and irregular," and the effect is a painting you can see through. She holds an MFA in textile design from the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

Recent milestones: Her first U.S. solo show, For Thirsting Flowers, ran at Carvalho Park in Brooklyn from April 5 to May 23, 2025, and Carvalho then took on U.S. representation. At Frieze Los Angeles in February 2026 the gallery showed a solo booth of her work. Frieze's end-of-fair report, quoted by ArtDependence, listed the works at $9,500 to $48,000, with the presentation totalling $275,000.

Where to see or buy: Carvalho in New York. In Paris she showed with Galerie Anne-Sarah Benichou in 2025.

Collector note: Silk is light-sensitive. Plan for low light and UV filtering in the room, and ask the gallery how the frames should be handled and moved.

6. Melissa Joseph

Based in: Brooklyn (born St. Marys, Pennsylvania, 1980) Medium: Needle-felted wool on industrial felt, plus small sculptures with found objects Gallery: Charles Moffett, New York

Joseph paints with a barbed felting needle, binding loose wool into industrial felt. Her sources are family photographs: dining rooms, dressers, meals, people resting together. The child of an Irish-American mother and an Indian father, she uses those images to look at diaspora, the labour of women and the history of craft. The felt pieces range from small objects to works up to eight by ten feet.

Recent milestones: She won the Brooklyn Museum's UOVO Prize, which brought a $25,000 grant, an installation, Tender, on the museum's Iris Cantor Plaza (June 6 to November 2, 2025), and a 50-by-50-foot mural on UOVO's Bushwick building. She joined Charles Moffett in 2025, and her first solo show there, Casserole Culture, runs from September 9 to October 17, 2026.

Where to see or buy: Charles Moffett, New York. If you're reading this before October 17, 2026, the show is still up.

7. Sayan Chanda

Based in: London (born Kolkata, 1989) Medium: Fiber and clay: weaving, stitching, quilting, dyeing and hand-built ceramics Galleries: Jhaveri Contemporary (Mumbai) and Cooke Latham Gallery (London), per his website

Chanda trained as a textile designer at India's National Institute of Design before an MA in fine art at Camberwell. His work reimagines votive objects, folk stories and the rituals he saw growing up in Kolkata, especially those around lesser-known and female deities. His 2026 exhibition centred on Bonbibi, the forest goddess of the Sundarbans mangrove delta, with vintage Kantha quilts assembled into a woven form and hand-built ceramic animals finished in metallic glazes.

Recent milestones: A solo show, Between Two Fires, at Cample Line in Scotland (March 22 to June 1, 2025), followed by How Many Fires, How Many Suns, How Many Dawns? at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill (February 14 to May 31, 2026). His site also lists the 6th Kochi-Muziris Biennale and a 2026 Delfina Foundation residency.

Where to see or buy: Jhaveri Contemporary and Cooke Latham Gallery. He has also shown with Green Art Gallery in Dubai.

Clay

8. Heidi Lau

Based in: New York (born Macau, 1987) Medium: Hand-built glazed ceramics, with glass and bronze Galleries: Sikkema Malloy Jenkins (New York), Matthew Brown (Los Angeles), Alisan Fine Arts (Hong Kong)

Lau is the most established artist on this list, but her market is still young. She builds ceramic sculptures that draw on mingqi, the objects buried with the dead in ancient China, and her gallery describes the work as exploring "the malleability and materiality of time." The forms look excavated rather than made, which suits the subject.

Recent milestones: In December 2025 she and Wong Ping became the first joint winners of M+'s Sigg Prize, each receiving HKD 300,000; her entry, Pavilion Procession, is a large ceramic installation with kinetic spiders. Her work was in the Metropolitan Museum's Monstrous Beauty exhibition in 2025 and is in the Met's collection. A two-artist show with Dominique Fung at ICA San Francisco is planned for fall and winter 2026 and will include robotic ceramic oysters.

Where to see or buy: Sikkema Malloy Jenkins in New York or Matthew Brown in Los Angeles.

Collector note: Glazed ceramics need stable plinths or wall mounts and careful shipping. Budget for a custom crate if the work travels.

Painting on Found Objects

9. Chris Oh

Based in: Queens, New York, and Portland, Oregon (born Portland, 1982) Medium: Paint on found and natural objects: shells, crystals, eggs, butterfly wings, antique glass Galleries: Fortnight Institute (New York), Capsule (Shanghai), Newchild (Antwerp), per his website

Oh copies small passages from Old Master paintings, a face, an eye, a pair of figures, onto objects that were never meant to carry an image. A Renaissance face sits on a crystal; a fragment of Adam and Eve floats on an antique leaded window. The miniature scale and the odd supports make you look the way people once looked at devotional objects: up close and slowly.

Recent milestones: Adore, his solo show at Newchild in Antwerp (May 9 to June 19, 2025), was built around the Van Eycks' Ghent Altarpiece, with Adam and Eve painted on leaded windows and eyes painted on a blue morpho butterfly suspended in a glass sphere. His previous solo show was Passage at Capsule Shanghai in 2023.

Where to see or buy: Fortnight Institute, Capsule or Newchild.

Collector note: These are small and fragile. Ask how each piece is mounted or cased, and keep shell and butterfly-wing works out of direct sun.

How to Act on a List Like This

A list is a starting point. Here is how I'd use it.

Look before you contact

Go to the gallery pages linked above and read the most recent exhibition text. Look at installation shots, not just single images, so you understand the real scale. If a show is open, go. Painted silk, felted wool and glazed clay look very different in person than on a screen.

When you email a gallery, be specific about which works or series interest you. Useful questions:

  • Is any work from the recent show still available, and are there works on paper or smaller pieces?
  • What is the current price range? Prices for early-career artists often move after a museum show or a prize, so last year's number may be out of date.
  • Is there a waiting list, and how does the gallery decide who gets new work?
  • What are the shipping, framing and installation requirements?

Galleries are more open with collectors who ask good questions and who aren't obviously looking to resell. Our guide to building artist relationships covers the etiquette.

Understand resale clauses

Some galleries ask buyers of early-career artists to agree not to resell for a set period, or to offer the work back to the gallery first. This protects the artist's market from quick flipping. If you're buying to live with the work, these terms rarely matter. Read them anyway.

See emerging work at fairs

Several of these artists reached new audiences through fair booths, Peroi at Frieze Los Angeles among them. The emerging-gallery sections at major fairs, such as Focus at Frieze, and fairs like NADA are some of the best places to see a lot of early-career work in one afternoon. Our art fair survival guide has tips for working a fair without burning out.

Buy for the right reasons

Some of these artists will build long careers. Some will slow down or stop. Prices for emerging artists can rise fast and then stall. Buy the work because you want to look at it every day. If it also gains value, treat that as a bonus.

Where to Go Next

Every fact on this page is linked to its source and was checked on October 5, 2026. Exhibition dates and gallery relationships change, so check with the gallery before you travel to a show.