Mary Lydon selected as Emerging Scottish Artist of the Year 2025

By Susan Mansfield, 30.10.2025

Mary Lydon, ‘The Sun is low’ In loving memory of Yana Pavlova. Tapestry; wool, cashmere, cotton, 108 x 160cm

Mary Lydon says she got the surprise of her life when she was told she had been selected as Emerging Scottish Artist of the Year by the Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation. “I got very emotional,” she says. “It took a few hours for me to work out it was real.”

Lydon, 26, is from Ukraine but is now based in Glasgow. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art earlier this year, and is currently studying on GSA’s MFA course. She works in a range of disciplines, including painting, drawing, engraving and in traditional crafts.

The award, which is made in partnership with Scotland House London, includes a bursary of £1,500 and a display of the artist’s work at Scotland House. Final year students and recent graduates are invited to enter via an open call; previous winners have included Brandon Logan and Lizzie Lilley.

“To be recognised this way is very significant for me,” Lydon says. “When I applied I thought maybe I will not get this because my work is heavily associated and inspired by Ukraine, I almost couldn’t believe it that I am being recognised as a Scottish artist. But Scotland has a long tradition of immigrant artists who are based here who have come from different cultures. It is a very special place for me.”

Lydon first came to the UK in 2016, to Devon, where she had the opportunity to do A-levels. “I was pretty sure all my life that I can only be an artist,” she says, “that’s the only thing I wanted to do.” She went on to apply for art schools, and chose Glasgow after a visit to the city. “It just felt so right. The art school was incredible. The weather was quite interesting - quite extreme! - and the city has a special gothic vibe to it, I felt a connection to Scotland.”

She started at GSA, studying Communication Design, in 2019 but “gradually shifted” towards Fine Art. During the pandemic, she returned to Kyiv for a year, coming back to Glasgow in 2022 after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The war in Ukraine further inspired her to research traditional Ukrainian crafts such as weaving and embroidery, which she now uses in her work.

She says: “I think the desire to learn to embroider or weave comes from a willingness to understand and research my identity. Embroidery is something my grandmother used to do, and her mother used to do. I’m just trying to understand my identity through art-making.”

She says a key moment in the development of her practice happened in 2021 when she was living in Kyiv, and took a closer look at the city’s manhole covers. “They are decorated with symbols related to the city, they look incredible.” She began to make her own set of replica manhole covers, engraving symbols and designs on laser-cut steel. “I got some tools, watched some YouTube videos, taught myself engraving, I wasn’t incredibly skilled but I realised I enjoyed it and I was pretty happy with the result.”

It was the beginning of a deep-dive into cultural symbols, folklore, national emblems and coats of arms, which continued when she returned to Glasgow. “After the full-scale invasion started, I went deeper into research about the visual culture of Ukraine and different craft traditions.”

“Ukraine is heavily associated with embroidery and rug-making, so every summer for the last three years I have tried to go on field trips to villages in different regions of Ukraine to learn from elderly people what their artistic practice was. It’s common to decorate houses with little floral wall paintings, embroidery and woven rugs, to make the house cosy and nice, but it is also art.”

She has adapted some of these crafts to address contemporary events, for example, in a tapestry inspired by a Ukrainian folk song, made on her home-built loom, she has added a line of drones which look, at first, like part of the traditional pattern.

In an installation made for the Kyiv Biennale in 2023 held in Augarten Contemporary in Vienna she adapted the Ukrainian tradition of wall decoration to incorporate anti-tank “hedgehogs” - spiky constructions of metal bars used in Ukraine to block the advance of Russian tanks - as well as flowers.

“To me, it is important to speak in my work about current realities, war realities, I didn’t want my pieces to be only decorative and floral and look nice. I wanted to embed some symbols associated with the Russia- Ukraine war.”

Lydon also has a curatorial practice, co-founding Skarbnystya  with Ewelinka Dochan to exhibit the work of emerging Ukrainian artists in the UK and raise funds to support them. “I have such an amazing support network in Glasgow and Devon, I felt I was in a position to help artists who are in Ukraine, to exhibit their work and raise money to help them sustain their art practice when times are so uncertain.”

Skarbnystya - the Ukrainian word for “treasure box” - was so successful it continued after an initial show, exhibiting Scottish and Ukrainian artists together in two further iterations, making links between Ukraine and Glasgow’s grassroots art infrastructure. Lydon is now working towards a Skarbnystya show with the Farsight Gallery in London, accompanied by a programme of lectures and events.

She says the Emerging Artist Award is “a milestone” in her development as an artist. “Getting this award gives me confidence, makes me feel what I’m doing might be considered to be significant by audience and by the experts. I will be hoping to collaborate with the Fleming Collection in the future, I hope that receiving the award might be the beginning of a long-term collaboration.”