Daisy Sims-Hilditch is a British figurative artist based in London, celebrated for her emotive portraiture and expressive landscapes. With a lineage steeped in artistic tradition—her great-great-grandfather was a Royal Academician, and both her parents are designers —Daisy’s artistic journey began organically. Her grandmother, whose mother was also an artist, would often take Daisy and her sister Betty to museums and art galleries as children. At the Musee D’Orsay, Daisy first laid eyes on the work of the impressionists as a teenager and her mother struggled to pull her away from these paintings as she studied them intently for hours. They stirred something deep inside Daisy and spoke to her emotionally. They somehow felt like long lost friends and after that visit Daisy would venture into the fields near home and practice expressing her love of the countryside where she grew up. She felt a deep connection with the landscape and painting became deeply rooted in her sense of self. 

Awarded an art scholarship at school, Daisy discovered oils during her sixth form years. Despite initial resistance from her teachers, she pursued the medium independently and passionately, completing personal projects outside the classroom. It was during this time that she began to understand painting not only as a vocation but as a form of emotional refuge—a way to access and express her inner world during challenging times. Her final school pieces, including a strikingly raw portrait of her grandfather, gained early recognition. The portrait was selected from over 18,000 submissions for exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, providing an important early affirmation of her artistic potential.

Shortly thereafter, one of her paintings—a portrait of her father—was sold at a charity auction for eight times its estimated value. Remarkably, it sold for the same amount as a painting by Ken Howard RA, one of Britain’s leading figurative artists, and achieved the highest bid of the night, further validating Daisy’s emerging status in the art world.

Despite this early success, institutional expectations led her briefly to university in Bristol to study French, an experience she quickly found unfulfilling. She left after a few weeks, embarking on a gap year dedicated to rediscovering her voice through painting.

Her journey then took her to Florence, where she enrolled at Charles H. Cecil Studios. However, feeling disconnected from the strict academic structure and classical cast drawing, Daisy struggled to find her place within the atelier. During this period, she focused independently on landscapes, which served as both emotional catharsis and a way to reconnect with her artistic intuition. A prolonged illness soon followed, interrupting what would traditionally be her years of training. Nevertheless, upon her recovery, Daisy persisted in painting, developing a highly personal approach rooted more in feeling than formula.

At the age of 23, her portrait work gained national recognition when one of her emotionally charged paintings, 'Alessandra', completed at the Charles Cecil Studios, was selected for the BP Portrait Awards at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition toured for a year across the UK, including the Scottish National Gallery, bringing Daisy’s work to a wider public audience at a formative stage of her career.