Contemporary Realist / Abstract Artist | United Arab Emirates
Pam Seton
Born in 1969
About the creator
- Pam Seton is a Kenyan-born contemporary realist and abstract artist based in Dubai, where she has lived for over twenty years. Working primarily with acrylic, pastel, and layered textures including collage, she creates work rooted in the atmospheres of land, sea, and sky. Nature, spirituality, and the emotional dimensions of human experience are central to her practice.
Short Biography
Pam Seton grew up in Kenya, where she developed an early connection to art and the natural world. After completing her education in Nairobi and the UK, she built a varied creative career spanning interior design, glass engraving, screen printing, and stage and backdrop production for theatre. She held a permanent exhibiting position at Unik Gallery in Nairobi throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, and organised and showed work in solo and group exhibitions across Kenya before relocating to Dubai. In the UAE, she has continued to exhibit and has expanded her practice to include jewellery design. She is also a qualified yoga instructor and certified life coach, disciplines that inform the contemplative quality of her artistic work.
Education
Pam attended Nairobi Academy in Kenya from 1973 to 1985, followed by Winkfield Place Careers College in Windsor, UK, from 1986 to 1987. She has since undertaken additional studies in ceramics and pottery.
Exhibitions
Pam has exhibited widely across Kenya and the UAE. Her solo exhibitions include self-curated private shows in Kenya (1994 to 2005), exhibitions at Braeburn School in Nairobi (2003 and 2005), Braeburn Hotel in Nairobi (2005), La Brocante in Dubai (2021), and a self-curated private gallery exhibition in 2022. Her group exhibition history spans a Wildlife Conservation Worldwide event in Kenya (1991), Hemingways Hotel in Watamu (1995), Kenyan Upcountry Artists group shows (1997 and 2004), Sarit Centre Mall in Nairobi (1999), Karen Country Club in Nairobi (2005), Jazz Festival Dubai (2006), Marina Market Dubai (2010), Showcase Gallery Dubai (2010), and a joint exhibition at Beyouland on Kite Beach, Dubai, alongside HH Sheikha Maytha Hasher Al Maktoum (2017). She also showed work with Peter Blackwell at Soames Hotel in Nanyuki, Kenya, in 2019. From 1997 to 2005, she was a permanent exhibiting artist at Unik Gallery, Sarit Centre, Nairobi.
Artistic Style
Pam works across realism and abstraction, often within the same piece, using acrylic, pastel, and collage to build layered surfaces that suggest movement, light, and atmosphere. Her subject matter draws on landscape, seascape, and sky, approached not as straightforward depictions but as evocations of mood and feeling. Her long engagement with holistic and energetic practices gives her work a contemplative quality, with colour and texture used to suggest stillness, connection, and the rhythms of the natural world.
Additional Information
Pam has worked professionally as an interior designer, glass engraver, screen print artist, stage and backdrop artist for school theatre productions in Kenya and Dubai, and jewellery designer. She taught art as part of an adult lifelong learning course at Braeburn School in Nairobi from 2003 to 2004. She is a qualified yoga instructor and a certified life coach.
Masterpieces by Pam Seton
