Collectors Art Prize recognizes outstanding achievements in contemporary art by celebrating the work of extraordinary artists whose practices are among the most innovative and influential of our time.
Julie Reby Waas has been creating abstract drawings for as long as she can remember. It was only during the isolating, stressful time of the Covid pandemic, however, that she began turning her original designs into artwork. She felt a desire to bring joy into her life and the lives of others through creative expression, using bright acrylics & watercolors to create compelling patterns to stimulate the viewer’s spontaneous reaction to each one of her pieces.
Carolin Rechberg is an interdisciplinary Fine Artist born in Starnberg, Germany. She places most value in the multi-sensory experience involved in the process of creating, the insights they generate and how these transfer to a way of life.
Marta Promińska is a Polish artist working in oil and ink, known for atmospheric, surreal imagery. Her work has received international recognition, including multiple American Art Awards—2nd Place Surrealism for “Beyond the Gates” (2021) and “In Extremis” (2018), and 2nd Place Art Brut for “Bema Pamięci” (2020)—as well as the Artist of the Future Award from Contemporary Art Curator Magazine (2020) and inclusion in ArtTour International’s Top 60 International Artists (2020).
Her practice is deeply rooted in her lived experiences, using intuitive abstract expressionist techniques with figurative undertones to explore complex themes of identity, resilience, embodiment, pain, and healing. Through her visually arresting narratives—spanning digital, acrylic, and animated mediums—she seeks to visualise the invisible realities of illness, offering an honest portal into the human spirit’s ability to adapt and transform adversity into creativity.
Along with being on the autistic spectrum and having ADHD, Lorna has had many other mental health and learning difficulties. She learned a lot of therapies while she was unwell, one of the main ones being DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy), which inspired her to start drawing because it helped her headspace. Geonimals is the result of this.
His paintings explore the human condition and emotional landscapes — expressing life's complexity, memories, and profound experiences through bold, expressive brushwork.
I began my artistic career at the start of 2023, rediscovering a passion that I had held since my teenage years. Life has its own rhythm, and I am now embracing the artistic path wholeheartedly.
GOLDYN, Ph.D. is a Munich-based artist from Poland. After graduating Fine Arts in Czestochowa, she continued her studio at the Wroclaw (Breslau) Academy of Fine Arts Department of Painting with Diplom and Master. She obtained a Doctor of Painting and Sculpture from Fine Arts Academy in Wroclaw in 2011.
Prudence’s art is not just seen, it is felt. It is a quiet force, a vibrant presence, a mirror to the unseen. Through abstraction, she offers a language for the ineffable, and in doing so, invites us to see the world, and ourselves, anew.
Gro Heining is a self-taught Norwegian painter (b. 1949). Since 1982 she has had 60 exhibitions in Norway, USA, Spain and Italy. Oslo Painting School (1985), Olav Mosebekk Drawing and Painting School (1996) and painting workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA (1991).
Ruźa Spak, born in Poland, studied painting at the Kunstakademie Hamburg and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. She also received a DAAD scholarship for Rome.
She lives and works in Berlin.
Jeremiah A. Gilbert is an award-winning photographer and travel writer. His travels have taken him to over a hundred countries and all seven continents, while his photography has been published internationally and exhibited worldwide. He is the author of four travel books, including Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel, From Tibet to Egypt: Early Travels After a Late Start, and On to Plan C: A Return to Travel, which documented his return to travel post-COVID and was the first to include his photography.
She is a self-taught artist and painting is her passion. She thanks nature for her inspiration and feels like a great great grandmother who was a Cherokee Indian has passed down her strong connection to nature. She hopes to heighten the awareness of viewers of the endless beauty that nature gives us and the importance of taking care of our planet. Her paintings radiate peace and serenity that the connection to nature gives.
ULLA is a Danish-born artist / painter living and working in London England. She grew up in the sprawling Danish countryside. Her father was a dedicated GP, her mother a psychologist, her upbringing was liberal, but caring. She later studied in Copenhagen.
Gerlinde K’s distinctive style blends traditional photography with digital artistry, pushing the boundaries of conventional techniques. Her diverse portfolio includes colorful landscapes, wildlife, floral photography, abstracts, portraits, architecture, seascapes, and black-and-white photography. Her work, characterized by a fusion of line, color, and imagination, creates evocative illusions that spark emotional and creative responses in viewers.
His body of work embodies a finely tuned interplay of visual and emotional registers, articulated through a singular expressive vocabulary rooted in meta-modernist sensibility. Engaging in a process of abstraction and distortion, the works transform motifs drawn from lived reality into meditative explorations of form, perception, and meaning.
Tina Ritter was born in Darmstadt in 1972 and grew up in a small village. Even as a child, she loved painting and drawing and was fascinated by the works of Salvador Dalí and M. C. Escher. Today she lives and works in Darmstadt.
Jørgen Folkersen, also known as Volkvard, began his journey as a visual artist more than 30 years ago, following a childhood and youth filled with drawing and creative exploration. It took approximately a decade before he felt ready to exhibit his work publicly.