Joanna Whittle graduated with honours in fine art painting, from Central St Martins, before gaining her master's at the Royal College of Art. Born in Zambia, Whittle now lives and works in Sheffield, where she primarily creates paintings and ceramics. She has exhibited at prestigious venues including the Royal Academy and won both the Harley Open Prize and the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2019. She is shortlisted for her work, Darkened Heart (a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth) (2025).

Darkened Heart (a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth) explores how pure darkness can cast light, with a poisonous bead at the painting's centre serving as a gleaming point of hardness amid the ephemeral and transitory. The work speaks to a quiet, almost unseen conflict between light and dark while searching for shelter somewhere in between, where light becomes an act of subversion and resilience.