Vicki Scaife recently graduated with a First-Class Honours Degree in Fine Art. She was awarded the John Kinross Scholarship by the Royal Scottish Academy, one of the most prestigious awards available to graduating Scottish artists, enabling a period of study in Florence.
She focuses on figurative studies because they offer a universally legible structure that remains open to interpretation.
Materials are chosen for their impermanence and volatility: charcoal that will not fully fix, and pigment that migrates. These materials resist control, mirroring the figure’s instability and vulnerability. Drips carry emotional weight; the mark accumulates into a visual record of felt experience rather than observed fact. In effect, responding to the weather in people’s heads rather than to their physical resemblance.
Her figurative drawings often appear unresolved, reflecting the belief that humans themselves remain unresolved and ambiguous.