Spanish painter Gemma Alpuente on her own chemical process technique, abstract art as freedom, the corruption of the art world, and the book she is writing for artists about emotional management and getting started.

She wanted to be an artist but was afraid she wasn't talented enough — so she studied industrial design instead. Then she graduated, ignored the degree, and drew every spare hour until the work took over. Stefhany Lozano has been making bold, colourful, mysteriously joyful paintings ever since. With a solo show in Porto, a two-person show at the Leipzig art museum, and her first augmented reality project underway, she's just getting started.

Three years ago clay arrived. From that exact moment it felt as natural as breathing. Giorgia Piu — Rose de Nour — is a ceramicist based in Rome with strong Mediterranean roots, a background in painting and drawing, and an approach to clay that is completely her own: contemplative, instinctive, and deeply rooted in the earth. She and the matter. She and I.

An Australian in Paris who let the 2015 terrorist attacks force him to question whether abstraction could be justified at all — and came out the other side with a practice built on dissent. Anthony White talks Kiefer, Foucault, the Gilets Jaunes, Rosa Parks, and why the most important thing he can tell you is: be kind.

He told himself to stop painting the horizon. That decision led to shapes that represent nothing yet mean everything — upright rectangles with missing corners, silly pink shapes with black patches, cardboard from old packaging boxes treated until it becomes art. A conversation with Zaltbommel's quietly rebellious minimalist, Kees van de Wal.

Architecture student turned photographer. Istanbul to Berlin. Samsung, Nikon, Audi, Swatch. Helin Bereket on bucket lists, happy accidents, and why every person is their own icon.

She sketches in pen — so nothing can be erased — and paints women who carry secrets. Florine Imo's imperfect goddesses are terrifying, fragile, and hypnotically irresistible. The Vienna-based painter talks lockdowns, RuPaul, and why the art world still has a long way to go.

Rachael Tarravechia paints rooms that were just recently occupied. No people, no phones, no cameras — but the aura of humanity still lingers. For her exhibition If These Walls Could Talk she used photographs of her grandmother Jane's bathroom, an 80s time capsule, and added a big knife. The kind that would appear in an 80s slasher movie. A bathroom is a place where we are most vulnerable and exposed. It felt appropriate. She uses a lot of pink and glitter, and she no longer worries about that.

She lives in a falling-apart castle in Amsterdam. She made a VR film about Gestalt therapy, she's writing a solo piece about Leonora Carrington, and she has a list of 40 things that make her feel well. Eva Bartels is multiple people in one body — maybe even some animals too.

The Observer Effect says the act of seeing veils the true nature of reality. That almost sounds like art theory — and to London photographer Scott Archibald, it basically is. A conversation about Caravaggio being a card, Cardi B being queen, and a year that turned out to be surprisingly freeing.