Contemporary Female Artists to Watch in 2025 | 5 Breakthrough Female Visual Artists on the Rise

Breaking Moulds: Meet the 5 Female Visual Artists Who are Changing the Game in 2025

We’re living in an era defined by artistic breakthroughs, with many of the most compelling voices belonging to women who are hellbent on reshaping the narrative. From vibrant canvases that pulse with lived experience to paintings that celebrate female desire, a new generation of contemporary female artists is stepping confidently into the spotlight.

The art world is finally catching up to what collectors and curators have known for years: some of the most exciting, experimental and emotionally intelligent work being made today is by female visual artists. Collectively, these women are rewriting the script on what art can represent in the 21st century.

Whether you're a seasoned collector or a curious newcomer, these are the female artists to watch in 2025. From London to Lagos and onwards to Massachusetts, these are the female artists who are helping to drive the art world forwards with their raw emotional power and fiercely original points of view. 

Artist #1: The Hyper-Saturated Sensuality of Helen Beard Art

Helen Beard in her studio

With her pop-tinged nudes,​​ Helen Beard, artist and feminist, walks the tightrope between abstraction and figuration. Working across painting, collage and sculpture, she reclaims femininity in art from the grip of objectification and reframes it with a fiercely intimate, woman-focussed perspective.

Like Tracey Emin, one of the most famous young female painters to put female desire and vulnerability front and centre, Beard explores the emotional and erotic with unashamed frankness. But where Emin gave us the stripped-back confessional chaos of My Bed, Beard delivers radiant feminine power through a louder and sunnier palette that turns pleasure into a cause for celebration.

Helen Beard, Flutterbye (2024)

Based in Brighton, Beard is part of a new generation of contemporary female artists who are using their art to speak boldly and on its own terms. With her works, she dismantles the male gaze with confidence and full-frontal honesty. After Damien Hirst acquired her debut collection in its entirety, her trajectory has only climbed, marked by sell-out shows, global attention and increasing critical acclaim. In recent years, exhibitions like ‘Erotic City’ in New York and ‘The Tulips Are Too Excitable’ in Amsterdam have showcased Beard’s ability to provoke, seduce and move in equal measure. 

Why is Helen Beard unmissable in 2025?  With feminist eroticism back on the cultural agenda, Helen Beard paintings land exactly where they’re meant to, with her saturated palettes and fearless compositions demanding attention. This is femininity in art at full volume.

Download Helen Beard's Artwork Catalogue

Artist #2: Charlotte Rose’s Subversive Pop Vision

Charlotte Rose in her studio

Charlotte Rose, artist and model, is turning pop iconography on its head, one cigarette packet at a time. With a sharp wit and a taste for subversion, the 26-year-old British artist splices Shakespeare with Marlboro, branding with literature and the seductive language of advertising with biting social critique. 

At first glance, Charlotte Rose art charms with its retro fonts, pastel palettes and vintage cigarette packaging. But look closer and the nostalgia fractures, with Macbeth quotes, breakup slogans and feminist mic drops shattering the soft-focus fantasy sold by old-school advertising.

A self-taught artist with a degree in English Literature, Rose brings literary muscle to her pop-infused visuals. Based in London, she began painting during lockdown and quickly found a cult following online. Since then, her work has caught the eye of celebrity collectors (think Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Yungblud), while her sell-out debut solo show confirmed what the internet already knew: Charlotte Rose is one to watch.

Why Charlotte Rose is Unmissable in 2025: With her beautifully rebellious paintings, Charlotte Rose has fast become one of the most compelling emerging female artists of recent years. Her work pokes fun at the shiny promises of consumer culture while tapping into the poetry, pain and performance of modern identity. Intimate, ironic and impossible to scroll past, it’s pop art for a new generation.

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Artist #3: Deborah Segun and the Geometry of the Self

Deborah Segun in her studio

Deborah Segun is quietly revolutionising the visual language of womanhood with her distinctly feminine artwork. With a background in fashion design and a fine-tuned instinct for form, Segun flattens and fragments the female figure into softened geometric silhouettes that are part Cubist puzzle, part emotional map. Using a predominantly pastel palette, her rhythmic compositions are a quiet celebration of identity, intimacy and self-possession.

After completing a degree in Fashion Design at the Polimoda Institute in Florence, Segun returned to her home city of Lagos in Nigeria to pursue art full time. Infusing her practice with the structural discipline of couture and the freedom of abstraction, her work always returns to the female body as a source of reflection.

Deborah Segun, Reassurance (2024)

Recent solo exhibitions have accelerated her ascent, with ‘A Moment To Myself’ in London and ‘Letting Yourself Be’ in Athens firmly positioning her as one of the most thoughtful voices in contemporary women’s art. 

Why is Deborah Segun Unmissable in 2025?  Meditations on self-love and identity, Deborah Segun art offers a counter-narrative to perfectionism and performative femininity, carving space for real, nuanced womanhood. In a world obsessed with hyper-polished femininity, Segun’s stylised figures offer something softer, with far more emotional depth.

Download Deborah Segun Artwork Catalogue

Artist #4: The Pulse and Pattern of Bridget Riley Art

Bridget Riley, Magenta and Blue (2002), Edition of 75

A towering figure among women in Contemporary art, Bridget Riley’s practice is anything but static. Now in her 90s, she remains one of the most vital and forward-thinking blue-chip artists at work today, still refining the language of abstraction with the same relentless curiosity that defined her pioneering role in the 1960s Op Art movement. Based between London and Cornwall, she continues to produce new series and exhibitions with the rigour of an artist half her age.

For those looking to learn more about Bridget Riley, it’s impossible to separate her legacy from the visual impact of her work. Built from meticulously hand-painted lines, curves and colour harmonies, Bridget Riley paintings create vibrating fields of movement that are at once cerebral and deeply sensual. While her early black-and-white works catapulted her to fame, Riley’s evolution into colour only deepened the emotional resonance of her work. 

Her printmaking, which began in the 1960s, has become a major part of her artistic legacy. Bridget Riley prints are not reproductions but original works in their own right—conceptually distinct from her paintings and increasingly recognised as such. With growing institutional and collector interest in female artists, and a 412% increase in average auction prices for her prints since 2000, Riley’s influence in the art world continues to be strongly felt.

Why the Artist Bridget Riley is Unmissable in 2025: As the art world wrestles with overstimulation and conceptual overload, Riley’s investment-grade prints offer visual clarity and kinetic joy. A legendary force among contemporary women artists, she invites the viewer into a precise yet poetic world where perception itself is the subject, with her paintings creating the space to slow down, focus and, most importantly, feel. 

Why Invest in Bridget Riley

Artist #5: Jessica Brilli Art and the Power of Nostalgia

Jessica Brilli in her studio

Part of a new generation of contemporary female artists who are transforming the familiar into something altogether more powerful, Jessica Brilli art brings nostalgia into sharp, painterly focus. Drawing inspiration from vintage Americana—mid-century motels, retro typewriters, suburban streets—her work transforms everyday scenes into meditative studies of light, silence and memory. 

Jessica Brilli, artist and collator of memories, creates crisp, sun-drenched compositions that are rooted in realism but softened by a cinematic calm. Based in Quincy, Massachusetts, she mines old Kodachrome slides and photographs to build her visual archive. Technically precise yet emotionally haunting, her paintings balance graphic design influences with a clear reverence for human stories, which are often hinted at rather than shown.

Jessica Brilli, Water Skiers (2024)

In recent years, Brilli’s international profile has grown, with her 2024 solo exhibition, ‘Dreamstate’, at Maddox Gallery drawing critical acclaim for its subtle exploration of post-war American culture. Previous shows across the US and Europe have placed her work firmly in the conversation around contemporary realism and female perspectives on memory, space and place.

Why Jessica Brilli is Unmissable in 2025: Her star continues to rise as collectors and curators gravitate towards art that speaks to both personal history and collective nostalgia. Quiet, contemplative and deeply human, Jessica Brilli paintings offer a counterpoint to digital overstimulation. Not simply depicting the past but reawakening it, her paintings stir a rush of feeling for the things we didn’t realise we’d forgotten.

Register Your Interest in Jessica Brilli Art

Thematic Threads: What Defines This Generation of Contemporary Female Artists?

Whether it’s Jessica Brilli’s quiet suburban scenes or Deborah Segun’s fragmented forms, identity and storytelling sit at the heart of the practices of all of the young female painters featured here. Each draws from the personal to tap into something universal, with their works unfolding layered with memory, perspective and a refusal to be defined by anyone but themselves.

There’s a bold current of innovation running through their practices too, from Charlotte Rose’s clever collision of branding, literature and feminist critique to Helen Beard’s unflinching use of high-saturation colour to reclaim and reframe female desire. These artists aren’t simply working within their mediums—they’re pushing them into new emotional and cultural terrain.

Helen Beard, Pleasure Centre (2022)

It’s a creative ethos that owes a quiet debt to pioneers like Bridget Riley, one of the most influential British female visual artists of our time. Her lifelong exploration of perception, movement and abstraction paved the way for a generation of artists to break free from conventional narratives and trust in the power of visual language to shift how we see the world. 

This new generation of contemporary female artists is equally attuned to the world around them. Their work carries an undercurrent of political and environmental awareness, addressing current themes, such as capitalism and identity, without losing nuance or beauty. The rise of artists like Deborah Segun reflects this culturally grounded perspective—one that weaves together heritage, personal narrative and modernity to expand what it means to be a woman, and an artist, in the 21st century.

There is also a noticeable shift from literal to lyrical expression. Rather than spelling things out, artists like Jessica Brilli invite viewers into a world composed of mood and feeling. In a fast-scrolling world, their work is a welcome invitation to slow down. 

Perhaps most powerfully, there’s an unmistakable thread of emotional intelligence that runs through every brushstroke. These are not just paintings—they’re experiences. They pull us in, ask us to feel and hold a mirror up to our own complexity.

Conclusion

From subversive pop art to emotionally charged abstraction, the female artists to watch in 2025 are not just participating in the cultural conversation—they’re leading it by setting the pace for what’s next in visual art by busting taboos, bending genres and pushing boundaries. At Maddox Gallery, we’re proud to champion the female voices who are redefining contemporary art with their bold perspectives, new narratives and the incredible energy they bring to the table.

Step deeper into the world of women in contemporary art by exploring our curated collections, visiting an exhibition or experiencing their work from anywhere via our online viewing rooms. And for collectors, curators and culture seekers alike, stay ahead of the curve by signing up to our newsletter for exclusive artist updates and invitations.

To discover more artists shaping the future of contemporary art, explore our latest exhibitions and curated collections.