British artist Emil Sands has been selected for Artsy's prestigious 2026 Vanguard list, recognizing him as one of ten emerging talents poised to become future leaders in contemporary art. The 27-year-old painter, who only began taking art seriously a few years ago, has quickly gained attention from influential galleries and curators with his intimate figurative works exploring the human form.

Sands' artistic vision was shaped by a childhood encounter with ancient Greek sculpture at the British Museum. During visits with his grandfather, he was struck by Polykleitos' fifth-century BCE sculpture Doryphoros, depicting the ideal male form. "I remember standing in front of this body, this fucking perfect body—an unattainable body for anyone—and feeling really like I understood it," Sands recalled during a recent interview at his New York studio.

The sculpture's contrapposto stance, with one hip shifted over a weight-bearing leg, represented a deliberate imbalance that resonated deeply with the young artist. "It was honest in a way that most things aren't," he explained. What struck him wasn't the figure's perfection but its asymmetry and embodiment of tension between stability and strain—a conflict familiar to Sands, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a child.

Sands' medical treatment involved frequent measurement and correction of his body, making him acutely aware of physical form from an early age. This experience now informs his obsessive focus on painting bodies—imagined figures, friends, and self-portraits. His subjects typically inhabit isolated, sometimes eerie landscapes, often positioned near water, creating impressionistic tableaux that present intimate studies of partially clothed human forms.

The artist's rapid rise in the art world has been remarkable. When interviewed in August, Sands was preparing to leave his Williamsburg studio for a residency with prestigious Victoria Miro gallery in Venice, where he will stage a solo exhibition following the program. He is also participating in a three-person show at Victoria Miro's London location this month. These opportunities follow a previous residency in Mexico City with gallery JO-HS and a solo exhibition at Kasmin (now Olney Gleason) earlier this year.

Until 2020, Sands primarily considered himself a writer rather than a visual artist. Though he had made art throughout childhood and completed a one-year painting program at Central Saint Martins before studying classics at Cambridge, he chose academia specifically because ancient art's treatment of the body matched his personal preoccupations. "The body is a central way to understand the world," he explained, describing this concept as the foundation of both his academic studies and eventual artwork.

Sands' serious painting practice began during COVID-19 lockdowns when he took refuge in his family's London garage. "I was so nervous to paint anything," he remembered. "I just painted self-portraits, self-portraits, self-portraits." He joked about worrying that his mother would think he was incurably self-obsessed during this period of intensive self-examination through art.

In 2022, Sands won the Henry Fellowship to study art and writing at Yale, where he expanded his focus beyond self-portraiture to observe other people's bodies and postures. During this period, he colored his figures in radioactive greens, purples, and reds, as seen in his ethereal painting "Staying in Line" (2023), featuring five naked bodies processing around a maypole. This work was included in his debut solo show at the renowned downtown gallery Tibor de Nagy in 2023.

That same year, Sands achieved a major breakthrough as a writer with an essay published in The Atlantic titled "Society Tells Me to Celebrate My Disability. What If I Don't Want To?" He described his thesis in characteristically frank terms: "It would be lovely to celebrate difference and yes, it would be gorgeous if I love my body, but it would also be a lie." The essay's success led to a book deal, and he now divides his time between writing and painting, starting to write as early as 6 a.m. and painting late into the night. His manuscript is due in January.

Sands' creative process involves collecting extensive reference photographs, sometimes asking friends to model or finding random landscapes that resonate with him. He frequently combines unrelated images to create hybrid compositions that establish particular moods, describing his approach as "very higgledy-piggledy." Initially, his figures existed almost exclusively in kaleidoscopic dreamscapes, but by his 2024 solo show with JO-HS, his focus had shifted toward coastal settings while retaining an eerie, dark quality.

These motifs continued in his Kasmin exhibition earlier this year, where subjects often faced away from viewers toward expanses of water, as seen in works like "Tide pool crab land" (2024) and "The last holiday" (2024). In these paintings, Sands' attention lingers on body contours—the curve of a shoulder, shadows cast across a back. While his perspective might appear purely romantic, his gaze is actually covetous, shaped by his childhood disability that transformed the sight of "normal, functioning" bodies into sources of fascination and longing.

"The work is less about desire itself than about his developing understanding of his own perspective," Sands explained. "I've had to retrain myself to understand that I see the world and look at the world in a really voyeuristic, desirous way. I always wanted to be different and still want to be different."

In recent works, Sands incorporates stone sculptures inspired by his long-standing interest in Greco-Roman art. His final painting before moving out of his studio featured two women in swimsuits alongside a close-up view of Praxiteles' fourth-century BCE sculpture "Aphrodite of Knidos," which was exceptionally provocative in the ancient world. Legend claims at least one man attempted to consummate his love for the stone goddess. These classical references connect directly to his academic background, reflecting on how ancient artists used the human body as an emblem of beauty and striving.

Though he rarely creates self-portraits now, Sands continues making work that examines his identity and desires. The best advice he ever received came from fellow artist and close friend Chloe Wise after he complained about self-doubt over not making "the sickest, most out-there, most cutting-edge avant-garde work." He had lamented, "I'm painting people looking at their bodies in a reasonably traditional color palette." Her blunt response was simply: "Emil, just make what you want."

Sands maintains the admirable frankness that fueled his breakthrough essay and continues shaping his paintings today. His work doesn't present idealized forms but teaches viewers to observe others and themselves with awareness of human foibles and tenderness toward the essential humanity of difference. "There's not another thing I could be making right now," he concluded, emphasizing how his art serves as a genuine extension of himself.

The Artsy Vanguard program, now in its eighth year, highlights the most promising artists working today. As 2026 approaches, the initiative celebrates ten talents positioned to become future leaders in contemporary art and culture, with Sands representing the intersection of classical education, personal experience, and contemporary artistic expression.