Artists That Inspired Me in 2025
Welsh artists, creative spaces and people to follow into 2026
As we reach the end of the year, reflection feels inevitable. 2025 has been a year filled with theatre, exhibitions, conversations and moments of quiet inspiration, the kind that stay with you long after you’ve left a gallery or folded a programme into your bag.
This article isn’t about trends or popularity. It’s about artists and creative spaces in Wales whose work I’ve seen, experienced or engaged with this year, and who genuinely inspired me. Some are established names in Welsh arts, others are emerging voices, collectives or cultural spaces shaping the future.
If your New Year’s resolution for 2026 is to be more involved in the arts, more culturally curious, or simply to discover new creative people in Wales, consider this your guide.
Janet Chaplin
Janet Chaplin is an artist and teacher based in South Wales, and her work has become a quiet highlight of my trips to Abergavenny Market. Her paintings are rich in atmosphere, full of contrasts in scale, colour and texture. She has a particular love for seascapes, where movement and mark-making take centre stage.
Janet’s experimentation with materials, from acrylic inks to salt gives her work an energy that feels alive. Stopping to chat with her about her process is always a pleasure, and endlessly inspiring.
This year, I bought a small piece of her work. It hangs on my bookshelf, and every time I reach for a book, I pause. I smile. I notice something new. That, to me, is exactly what good art should do — make us stop, take a moment, and really look.
Gary Yeung
Gary Yeung is a Hong Kong-born, Wales-based figurative artist whose work focuses on urban sketching and plein-air drawing. Using watercolour and ink, he captures cityscapes and landscapes across South Wales — Cardiff, Newport, Cathays Park, Cardiff City Hall, places many of us walk past every day.
I attended one of Gary’s exhibitions in Newport this year, and what struck me most was his sketchbooks. Seeing them displayed allowed viewers to experience his art first-hand, as a living practice rather than a finished product. His work reflects migration, observation and belonging, and it quietly celebrates the everyday architecture of Wales.
Gary is also deeply embedded in the Welsh arts community through teaching, workshops and collaboration — the kind of creative presence that strengthens the cultural fabric of Wales.
Hâf Weighton
Hâf Weighton is a Welsh-speaking textile artist based in the seaside town of Penarth. With a background in Textiles and Fashion from Liverpool John Moores University, her work has been exhibited internationally, yet remains deeply rooted in Welsh places and experiences.
Her upcoming exhibition High Street (January–March 2026) explores the High Street as more than just a commercial space. Through paint, stitch, print and film, Hâf interprets the sensory and emotional layers of Welsh high streets — places where communities form, memories gather, and identities are shaped.
Her fabric pieces are not literal representations, but imagined spaces built from remembered shopfronts, textures and walks through towns across Wales. The work feels layered, thoughtful and deeply human, surfacing histories while questioning the future. It’s art that invites viewers to make their own connections and that’s incredibly powerful.
Glenroy Arts
Glenroy Arts is one of the most intriguing Welsh arts spaces I’ve come across. Based in a beautifully restored Victorian house in Roath, Cardiff, it operates as both a gallery and an Airbnb, allowing people to experience art in a real, lived-in environment.
Although I frustratingly haven’t made it to an exhibition this year due to clashing commitments, their concept alone inspires me. Glenroy Arts challenges what a gallery can be relaxed, accessible and welcoming and provides a platform for artists from across Wales and the UK to showcase their work in a non-traditional setting.
It’s exactly this kind of creative thinking that keeps the Welsh arts scene evolving.
Nathan Wyburn
Nathan Wyburn is one of those artists whose influence extends far beyond the work itself. Known for creating pop culture and celebrity portraits using unconventional materials including the now-iconic Marmite on toast, he is a contemporary Welsh artist with a strong media presence.
What truly inspires me is Nathan’s commitment to community. Alongside his best friend and business partner Wayne Courtney, thery runs Cardiff Theatre Café, a space rooted in inclusion, accessibility and creative opportunity. From theatre and cabaret to musical performances and the Cardiffian Awards, they are actively building platforms for others.
They are trailblazers within the Welsh creative sector, and their dedication to nurturing talent is as impactful as any artwork.
Caitlin Flood-Molyneux
Caitlin Flood-Molyneux is a contemporary Welsh painter whose work uses gestural abstraction to express emotion and lived experience. Since completing their Master’s in Fine Art, Caitlin has exhibited across the UK and the US, and their work continues to grow in confidence and depth.
Every piece I’ve seen feels like something I’d proudly hang in my home. Recently, we both attended an awards ceremony where we won in our respective categories, and I had the chance to speak with them briefly. Their openness, kindness and humility left a real impression.
For such a young artist, Caitlin already feels like the face of modern Welsh art — and someone I fully intend to get to know better in 2026.
Noah Bakour
Noah Bakour is a Syrian-born visual artist and filmmaker based in the UK, whose work explores displacement, identity and resilience. Using film, photography and animation, Noah amplifies marginalised voices, particularly from refugee communities.
I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Noah through mutual friends, and his passion for storytelling is deeply inspiring. He began documenting the Syrian war as a teenager, an experience that continues to shape his artistic practice today.
Beyond his own work, Noah leads projects supporting other refugee creatives, contributing enormously to the cultural landscape of Wales. His art is rooted in empathy, connection and humanity, qualities the world, and the arts, need more of.
Darren Emerson
Darren Emerson directed In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, the immersive VR experience I saw at the Wales Millennium Centre this year, and it completely blew me away.
Set in 1989, the experience transports audiences into the heart of the UK acid house movement, combining theatre, film, music, gaming and visual art. It’s a shared VR journey where stories of rave culture, police, promoters and partygoers collide in a powerful celebration of music’s ability to unite communities.
Darren’s work shows how technology and art can intersect in meaningful ways. His vision for “experiences of the future” excites me deeply and makes me genuinely hopeful for what Tech x Art projects in Wales could become.
Looking Ahead to 2026
These artists and spaces reminded me why I fell in love with the arts in the first place. Welsh artists are not only producing exceptional work, they are building communities, asking difficult questions, and creating spaces where people feel seen.
If 2026 is the year you decide to be more cultured, more curious, or more connected to the creative people of Wales, start here. Support artists. Visit exhibitions. Talk to makers. And most importantly — keep looking.
Because inspiration is everywhere, if we slow down long enough to notice it.
