Elizabeth Maw creates work that insists on slowness, presence, and touch. Her practice champions handmaking as both method and philosophy, offering viewers space for quiet contemplation. Working primarily with steel, Maw explores negative space through repetitive geometric and organic patterns that generate subtle visual rhythms. These linear structures extend into their surroundings as light passes through them, casting shifting shadows that form intangible silhouettes—echoes of something just beyond reach. Without a fixed front or back, Maw’s sculptures resist singular viewpoints. Instead, they invite movement. As viewers circle the works, forms appear to expand and dissolve; lines converge, overlap, and separate, producing a dynamic interplay between solidity and air. The sculptures are not static objects but constructed presences within space. Welding has fundamentally shaped Maw’s approach, allowing her to assemble rather than carve or cast—building structures that emphasize openness, balance, weight, tension, and containment. Through this additive process, steel becomes both drawn line and architectural gesture. Working between two and three dimensions, each aspect of Maw’s practice informs and extends the other. The sculptures generate shifting shadows that become drawings in space—ephemeral counterparts to the solidity of steel—while her two- dimensional works translate these spatial experiences into optical rhythm and line. In turn, the moiré patterns and layered repetitions of her flat works feed back into her sculptural language, influencing structure, spacing, and movement. This dialogue between object and shadow, surface and volume, creates a continuous exchange across forms, where neither medium is secondary but instead part of an interconnected exploration of rhythm, perception, and presence. Central to Maw’s practice is the labour-intensive nature of making. Time, physical engagement, and material resistance are embedded within each piece, and this investment of effort remains palpable to the viewer. Sustainability also informs her approach, guiding material choices and processes wherever possible. After a long career in media and public relations, Elizabeth Maw studied for a fine art degree at Norwich University of the Arts. Graduating in 2025, Maw was awarded Norfolk Contemporary Arts Society’s (ncas) New Makers Prize for her large steel structure of repetitive and organic forms. On graduation she was also invited to be a graduate member of the Norwich 20 Group. She is currently studying for a Fine Art Masters at Norwich University of the Arts and, is a Trustee of Incas. Welding has transformed how Maw approaches sculpture: not as a static object, but as a constructed presence within space. Unlike carved or cast forms, welded structures allow her to assemble and extend - creating lines, balances, and volumes that explore openness, weight, tension and containment. To help develop her welded sculptural work, Maw successfully applied for The Dubery and Brogden scholarship presented by East Anglia Art Fund. Maw lives in Norwich and has exhibited work in East Anglia and London, most recently in ‘The Space Between’ at St Margaret’s Gallery, Norwich and the Norwich University of the Arts’ MA Fine Art and Textile Interim Exhibition at St Mary’s Works, Norwich.