Our new prospectus is launched and ready to travel the country on our UCAS and UK uni search stands. This years cover features the beautiful mural work of our final year BA (Hons) Fine Art student Faith Maddison.

We caught up with Faith to find out more about the concept behind her painting of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and to gain insight into what it’s like studying Fine Art in our school. We were really interested to find out more about how active she is within our local art scene and to hear her advice for budding art students!

How does it feel to have your work on the cover of our new prospectus?

With my own work being on the front cover of the prospectus I feel ecstatic. I never thought my work would be featured on the front cover, so I am completely over joyed with some sense of pride. I am also entirely grateful that I am able to have this opportunity. And I hope everyone who sees this work enjoys it as much as me.

This piece features Ruth Bader Ginsberg, how come you chose her to feature in the work?

I chose to feature Ruth Bader Ginsberg as part of my work as she was a huge role model for women/ females. She was the first Jewish women and the second woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court. She spent most of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women’ s rights, in which she won many arguments in the court fighting for positive change in these issues. She also decided to be a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. She has played such a huge role in fighting for a positive change and manages to use her power and knowledge for good.

Feminist icons feature a lot in your paintings. How important is this to your practice?

All of my work is based off of Feminist women. They don’t necessarily have to be famous. I do a lot of research into women who have made any size contribution towards women’s rights. My practice is about immortalising these women so people won’t forget them or if they are seeing them for the first it enables the audience to be educated on who these women were and what they did.

Let us know any projects you are working on currently?

I am currently working on a duel show with artist Liv Askwith which is going o be at Pineapple Black Arts in Middlesbrough. This show will be taking place in February around Valentine’s day and will be themed around love languages and will both be responding to certain love language each in our own styles of work.

What is special about the northern school of art/ BA (Hons) Fine Art?

The things that are special about the Northern School of Art are the amount of personal connections that they have with the world that the students will be going into. Not only the university and all the partners they have, but the lecturers as well. I have personally met so many great artists who are doing fine art as their full-time job and they give me advice on the art world, as well as I have gotten personal 1 on 1 tutorials on my own practice with them to get feedback from them which is extremely helpful.

It is also great because of the size of the university. This school is quite small so the lecturers on your course and other courses can get to know all of the students more personally then if it had been a bigger institution.

What are your next steps going to be after university?

I have got a place of on teaching course in order to get my PGCE (teaching qualification). After this I hope to study further as a Masters student at the Northern school of Art on the Art’s Practice MA qualification.

Do you have any advice for students looking to study Fine Art?

Advice I would give for any student looking to do fine art is be prepared to try everything and be open to everything. The first year is all about experimenting as much as possible, to get things wrong to get things right and to discover subjects, materials and processes you might have never tried and you might enjoy.

You can keep up to date with faiths works on her Instagram: @havefaitharts

If you are interested in studying BA (Hons) Fine Art you can find out the details and apply here.